Design Engineer at Financial Times

About Us

Here at the FT, gold-standard journalism is just the beginning. 500-people strong, our Product & Tech team keeps us ahead of the ever-changing digital landscape by delivering cutting-edge products to over one million digital subscribers every day. Our plans for growth rely on a diverse, dedicated and dynamic group of product, tech, delivery and data specialists - everyone’s welcome in this friendly, forward-thinking team. And with entrepreneurial spirit, intelligence and opportunity at every turn, there’s no limits to where your FT career will take you.

Our commitment to diversity and inclusion in the workplace

At the FT, we give all employees a voice so that diverse perspectives are heard and valued. We believe that a supportive workplace is one where employees feel they can be themselves at work. We'll continue to remove barriers for all, and in particular barriers facing employees from underrepresented groups.

About the Origami team

We’re looking for a senior front-end engineer with design experience, to help build the next chapter of our multi-brand design system, Origami.

The latest version of Origami is based on a new technical architecture using design tokens and web component standards. It includes multi-brand support; a refined design language; much improved design guidelines; and aligned Figma libraries with integrations to support designer and engineer collaboration. We’re at the early stages of creating and rolling out our new vision for Origami, so this is an exciting time to join the team (see our beta website to learn more).

You will join the Origami team, a growing, multi-disciplinary team including 2 dedicated designers and 5 engineers. As a team we work closely with outside collaborators, such as a design working group formed from across the FT Group – set up to help us tackle specific design system challenges.

In conjunction with the team and our collaborators, you’ll have the opportunity to help refine our approach, our design language, and build out a new suite of web components with supporting documentation and tools.

What you’ll be doing

• Collaborate closely with the design team to refine design.
• Implement accessible web components.
• Author component usage and design guidelines.
• Support the design team to ensure our Figma libraries and implementation are aligned.
• Build tooling, such as Figma plugins, to support designer and engineer collaboration.
• Lead on projects, in collaboration with other groups and team members, to manage a global design system at scale.
• Share knowledge, support, and help others across the organisation succeed.

This role will be right for you if...

• You understand design principles and are able to support designers with your knowledge of the web to create better experiences.
• You care about writing accessible and progressively enhanced front-end code.
• You enjoy teaching, whether that be pair programming, giving talks, writing good documentation, leading workshops, or mentoring more junior engineers.
• You maintain a good work/life balance and can handle your own workload.
• You are comfortable breaking down complex technical proposals into discrete tasks. Managing and communicating your own workload.

Technologies you’ll be familiar with

This position requires you to be comfortable with the essential skills below:

• HTML – with a focus on semantic and accessible markup
• CSS – we’re modernising our CSS, taking advantage of many exciting developments in CSS
• Client-side JavaScript – we consider how our code will integrate with popular frameworks like React, but don’t often use frameworks ourselves
• Figma – Origami works closely with our design teams and support the development of our design tooling
• Accessibility – experience building and testing on the web with assistive technologies

What’s in it for you? Our Benefits

Our benefits vary depending on location, but we are committed to providing best in class perks across all our offices as well as an inclusive environment to develop your career. Examples of our benefits include; generous annual leave allowances, flexible working (including working from home), medical cover, enhanced parental packages, subsidised gym memberships and Giving Back opportunities. Full details of our benefits can be found here.

Further Information

The FT is committed to providing an inclusive working environment for all. We are an equal opportunities employer who seeks to recruit and appoint the best talent regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief. We have implemented a hybrid working model and we also promote flexible working and will consider specific requests around flexibility for all roles where it can be accommodated. Please let us know if you require any reaosnable adjustments as part of the application process or to enable you to attend an interview. If you would like to discuss your requirements, or have any questions, please send an email to [email protected] and a member of our team will be happy to help.