Our company is committed to being trusted voices of light and truth reaching hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
The Deseret News seeks a director of software engineering. In addition to leading and mentoring our software developers, this position will assist in making infrastructure-level decisions and participate actively in day-to-day development. Successful candidates will have experience with a variety of software development technologies and aren’t afraid to jump in and learn more. This position will report to the vp of product & technology.
The software development team, together with product managers, help build the Deseret News digital portfolio: Deseret News (deseret.com and apps), the Church News (thechurchnews.com and apps) and Utah Business (utahbusiness.com). Building on our strong 175-year legacy, our team creates products that showcase our journalism, inform readers and elevate conversations about current events and issues.
Primary languages used are JavaScript and PHP. We use GraphQL for many of our APIs, and React for most of our interactive front ends. Most of our infrastructure is hosted with AWS. We use a combination of Docker containers hosted on Fargate-managed ECS instances and some standalone EC2 servers. Additionally, we use Lambda functions for various integrations and automations, and Google BigQuery for supplemental analytics processing. Our data is housed in a combination of MySQL and PgSQL databases. If this sounds like a stack you would like to work with, you may be a good candidate for the position.
While this position is a management position there is an expectation you will directly help the team develop new features and maintain the existing stack.
This position will mainly work remotely, coming into our offices in Downtown SLC from time to time. However, the selected candidate must reside within Utah, Idaho, or Arizona.
At a minimum, you’re a candidate if you can demonstrate:
5 or more years of experience managing people, ideally developers.
8 or more years of current experience with web software development technologies and tools.
You are self-motivated to learn new and emerging technologies.
You are a strong team and individual motivator with a positive attitude who enjoys working with others.
You have the ability to work both independently and collaboratively on large projects with team members, including stakeholders, product owners, designers and other developers.
Experience maintaining existing enterprise web applications.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Experience optimizing and working with high traffic web sites using caching and scalability technologies.
An ideal candidate will have:
Experience working with PHP MVC frameworks, namely Symfony.
Experience working with front end technologies: React.js and ES6+.
Experience working with SQL databases, especially MySQL and PostgreSQL.
An understanding of best practices and design principles as they pertain to architecting web applications.
Experience working with consuming and writing GraphQL and REST APIs.
Experience working with source control, specifically Git.
Experience developing within a virtualized environment using Docker.
Experience working with AWS and managing infrastructure as code with services like Terraform, Chef, Puppet or Ansible.
Experience working with Agile/Scrum methodology and use of project/story tracking software (Shortcut, Jira, Trello or similar).
Our team
You will join an energetic group of colleagues who aspire to the best processes for development that fit our team. Our team members don't take themselves too seriously, but we are serious about working together as digital innovators.
Our culture
Culture is a very important part of the Deseret News Publishing Company. We look for people who exhibit and exemplify our Cultural Beliefs:
Think Audience — I understand and engage our audiences.
Build Trust — I share my best, respect my colleagues and expect others to do the same.
Be One — I collaborate to build a unified, world-class team.
Align Daily — I align my efforts daily with our Key Results.
Own It — I continually ask, "What else can I do to achieve our results?" and refuse to blame others.
Go Big — I inform and influence the world in a way no one else does.
Our company
The Deseret News is Utah's oldest newspaper and the Beehive state's longest continuously-operating business. Our primary focus is digital and our reach is national and global with well over half of our digital readers living outside of Utah.