Job Description

We are currently hiring for a Senior Frontend Developer role for the Nature Masterclasses online training service.
Nature Masterclasses is a portfolio of training solutions focused on building the skills, confidence, and careers of researchers in the sciences. It comprises of both face-to-face (virtual and in-person) live training workshops and an online platform of on-demand e-learning courses, known as "Nature Masterclasses On-Demand" (NMO).
NMO is a global B2B service with over 180 customers, including in mainland China. We currently have 20 online courses on the platform, with plans to continue to expand this and to augment with other content types such as standalone videos and webinar recordings.
The course content is developed by our specialist publishing team, which consists of the Head of Publishing, six publishing managers and a learning design manager.
NMO is part of a small, entrepreneurial business unit that fully embraces the principles of Agile. We very much believe the user must be at the heart of what we do and the key to creating a great product is through evidence based, iterative learning and development. Web accessibility is extremely important to us, and we strive to keep improving the product in line with these evolving standards.
The Role
We're looking for a Senior Frontend Developer. Your background will have been in frontend development, having gained knowledge of a wide range of methodologies and technologies. You will have a comprehensive understanding of standards-based frontend technologies, focusing on the development of progressively enhanced solutions. Our primary focus is always the user, not the technology.
Working primarily with the Product Manager, you will be the sole engineer to develop NMO's digital experience; initially supporting the transition of the existing service to a new technical architecture based on Node.js & Express, and then driving our ongoing efforts to create a great learning experience for end-users, and deliver real value to our customers.
At Springer Nature you will be working as part of a large (350+) and mature digital product development department called Springer Nature Digital (SND). SND includes dedicated Frontend and Backend developers, UI, UX and User Researchers, QA, BA and DevOps. Although you will be the sole developer on the team, you will be well-supported by the wider community in the department; and will be provided with the relevant context and expertise to make effective decisions.
You should be comfortable working unsupervised on complex, long-lived systems (where robustness and maintainability take priority over the latest technology), providing incremental improvements to existing applications as well as building new features.
Although primarily a client-side specialist, you will have experience in building Node.js and Express applications and should be comfortable in this area. The role does not demand client-side JavaScript framework skills; instead we favour native JavaScript in the client as part of a progressive enhancement approach to web standards-based development. We render HTML on the server and deliver CSS and JS as appropriate to ensure our services are accessible, robust and performant.
You should be comfortable following existing designs and applying components from our . The role would suit a developer with a UX background, an interest in some form of UX, or an "eye for design".
We have a strong testing culture in SND and while some testing experience is required, we will be able to support you in developing your testing experience.
As the sole developer on the team you should be comfortable being self-organising, having a focus on delivery, and maintaining appropriate technical standards. Additionally, you will be comfortable effectively communicating with non-technical product and editorial staff on the team.
We do recognise that this role requires a broad range of skills, and do not expect candidates to be expert in all areas - you will not be alone, and will be supported by other disciplines in SND.
We prioritise empathy, communication skills, passion for web development, a focus on the user and enthusiasm over technical wizardry.
Experience in service-oriented architectures, working with design systems, Learning Management Systems, CMSes and CI/CD systems is a plus - but not a requirement.
Please visit the to learn more about who we are and what we do. To gain an understanding of frontend development and our approach to accessibility at Springer Nature, browse our .
What you'll be doing
Within 3 Months

• Work with the Product Manager to understand the product requirements and develop a clear understanding of scope for the MVP to go-live.
• Have a clear understanding of the technical plan to migrate the service to a new LMS & CMS; with support from existing teams.
• Participate in, and help evolve, the team's (lightweight) agile processes and ceremonies.
• Build a relationship with your peers in the Frontend discipline, gaining insight into collaboration and technology across the department, and understanding our approach to web development; as documented in our

. * Develop relationships with experts in web accessibility, performance and security and integrate these considerations early into your development process and code.

• Get familiar with the current stack and plans for the new.
• Start to build a relationship with our LMS vendor and an understanding of their product.
• Help define the information architecture in collaboration with the product team; in terms of URL structure & site maps.
• Deploy the beginnings of the web application to our application environment - we typically deploy to CloudFoundry using Concourse CI/CD - documentation and support is readily available.
• Ensure development proceeds in line with our technical requirements through collaboration with the FED discipline via various collaborative means, such as informal chats and Pull Requests.
• Ensure non-functional requirements such as logging are met.
• Start displaying CMS content in the web application by calling related REST APIs that return JSON.
• Work with tech leads in SND to consider the caching of those responses.
• Become familiar with

, and build a relationship with the design system team. * Consider and implement components as applicable to the core journeys of the new product.

• Start to develop new features en route to MVP.
• With the vendor technical team and technical support internally, work to support the migration of existing user and course data.
• Be able to understand and discuss business requirements with stakeholders and Product Managers.

Within 6 months

• Create seamless experiences for users between CMS pages and the LMS (where course content is housed).
• Have developed CMS-driven pages that support the discovery of NMO courses content by free and subscribed NMO users.
• Develop marketing pages and web forms that enable customer lead generation, including integration with relevant sales & marketing systems.
• With support from central teams, implement the collection of analytics data via Google Analytics.
• In conjunction with our SEO team, ensuring users and customers can easily discover the product using web search engines, taking in consideration our global user base, especially China.
• In conjunction with our platform team, ensure performance of the application is suitable for users in various markets, especially China (e.g. through use of CDNs to serve static assets).
• Have an understanding of the team's context within the publishing business they are working in.
• Seek reviews from experts in the department to assess web accessibility, security and performance before go-live, and respond to any issues raised.
• Have provided the relevant support to enable the migrated service to go-live.

Within 12 months

• Working with benchmarked user data to form product experiments to improve usage and engagement metrics.
• Be confident working with minimal support from the FED discipline; but continuing to seek support in specialised areas such as web accessibility, performance and security.
• Consider promoting developed components up into the wider design system where appropriate, in collaboration with the design system team.
• Observe application monitoring output and respond to alerts raised in a collaborative and open manner.
• Onboard new members to the team or help other teams in the onboarding process.
• Proactively provide useful and actionable feedback to team members.
• Continue to implement new features as part of an Agile product development process.
• Triage support queries, diagnose and fix issues in live applications.
• Update project dependencies.
• Contribute to blameless post-mortems.
• Understand our customers' needs, both internal and external, and how your work affects their experience.

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Job Posting End Date: 30-06-2025