About Us
The world isn’t standing still, and neither is Allstate. We’re moving quickly, looking across our businesses and brands and taking bold steps to better serve customers’ evolving needs. That’s why now is an exciting time to join our team. You’ll have opportunities to take risks, challenge the status quo and shape the future for the greater good.
You’ll do all this in an environment of excellence and the highest ethical standards – a place where values such as integrity, inclusive diversity and accountability are paramount. We empower every employee to lead, drive change and give back where they work and live. Our people are our greatest strength, and we work as one team in service of our customers and communities.
Allstate operate a very flexible hybrid working policy that will allow you to design your working week in collaboration with your manager with a blend of remote and office working for NI based employees as well as condensed working patterns (4 day week/9 day fortnight).
Join our team and you’ll find challenge and reward in a culture of innovation, support and balance.
Location
Belfast/ Derry-Londonderry/ Strabane
Your role in the team
We are looking for an enthusiastic and dynamic Technical Lead for the Billing & Payment Team within Allstate. The Technical Lead will play a key role within this global team.
This is an exciting time to join the Billing & Payment area within Allstate as we continue to deliver against an extensive Modernization Program. The right candidate will be passionate about delivering high quality solutions and ideally have experience leading technical teams through periods of change and innovation.
Responsibilities include (but are not limited to)
Gathering/Analyzing Requirements
- Oversees the requirements gathering and analysis to understand the domain of highly complex software functionality, hardware/software interfaces, and overall software characteristics.
- Evaluates detailed business, functional, and high-level technical requirements (e.g. recovery, security, audit, etc.) to translate requirements into working and maintainable solutions within existing application frameworks.
- Participates in detailed product or system change estimates.
- Delivers incrementally working software by provide technical guidance to ensure the team has a clear understanding of agree-upon epics and user stories.
- Identifies improvement opportunities and implements actionable items for the next sprint.
- Documents and demonstrates solutions (e.g. systems flow, data usage, work processes, etc.) and investigates problem areas in collaboration with client users and stakeholders.
Development, Testing, and Troubleshooting
- Oversees software development, change, testing, and release processes and implements improvements.
- Acts as an Agile lead by directing the efforts of development teams.
- Ensures the successful release of new products, applications, and iterations of existing products in close collaboration with Delivery Manager, Quality Engineering, Technology Architecture and other development team members.
- Leads and organizes testing reviews to track and resolve complex defects and assist in planning efforts for highly complex fucntional tests.
- Designs detailed technical coponents with high-level architecture.
- Understands and applies the use of design patterns for highly complex software applications.
- Leads and provides feedback in design reviews, sprint planning, sprint reviews, and retrospectives.
- Leads the development of software solutions aligned to acceptance criteria for user stories based on information needs (e.g. system flow, data usage, work processes, etc.).
- Coordinates and participates in product scoping, discovery, and framing to translate user features into system design.
- Evaluates, maintains, and improves the performance of existing software.
- Schedules and executes code reviews to provide feedback to less experienced team members and propose solutions.
- Uses programming, scripting, and/or database languages to write software code using software engineering and development best practices (e.g. coding standards, code reviews, source control management, scalability, maintainability, availability, build processes, testing, operations, etc.).
Release, Change Management, and Troubleshooting
- Oversees the overall software delivery of multiple product teams.
- Participates in change and incident management, root cause analysis, and problem records resolution in compliance with defined service level agreements (SLAs).
- Implements continouous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines and practices.
- Monitors team output for adherence to compliance requirements (e.g. Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), PCI, etc).
- Follows secure application development practices that adhere to industry and Allstate standards.
- Collects, analyzes, and summarizes development and service issues to recommend changes in software development policies and procedures.
Practice Maturation
- Ensures that the development team adheres to compliance requirements and regulations (SOX, PCI) where applicable.
- Contributes to the Software Development community of practice by providing expertise in best practices and promoting the team’s value proposition to the wider department and organization.
- Determines and proposes software development process improvements.
- Promotes a knowledge-sharing mindset among the team.
- Remains abreast of development tools, programming techniques, and computing equipment to recommend solutions aligned with current standards and best practices.
- Coaches and guides less experienced staff - Assists less experience developers with improving behavioural skills, technical leadership skills, and conflict management skills.
So, what are the essential criteria to apply?
- All candidates must evidence an existing right to work in the UK'
- Have a minimum of 5 years related experience as a Software Developer/Engineer/Programmer
- Experience in developing, designing, or leading teams to deliver in:
- API methodologies (SOAP / REST)
- Java 8 or higher / Springboot / REACT
- SQL
- Experience in developing Microservices
- Understanding of operating systems, networking, databases and security
- Experience leading teams delivering through agile methodologies - scrum, lean or Kanban etc.
- Extensive experience writing technical and non-functional user stories
- Broad experience reviewing test plans and conducting code reviews
- Experience in onshore/offshore model for project delivery
- Coaching and mentorship experience to direct a team’s personal and professional development
We also have some desirable criteria
- Experience in developing, designing, or leading teams to deliver in:
- .NET
- Messaging technologies (e.g. Kafka)
- ETL tools (e.g. Talend / SSIS)
- Advanced knowledge of common design patterns, their purpose, and when and how they are applied to commonly encountered design problems
- Experience developing continuous integration, continuous delivery, and continuous deployment pipelines
- Experience of using GitHub and Jenkins
- Experience of using Splunk
- Knowledge of secure application development and OWASP vulnerabilities
- Experience with IDEs and testing software
- Extensive experience with a broad range of software development practices (e.g. full-stack development front- and back-end development, design, and implementation, database (e.g. relational, NoSQL, caching, etc.), messaging, and big data development, implementation, and optimization.
- Experience with automated unit testing, monitoring, and evaluation.
- Experience, knowledge or understanding of Billing and Payment products
- Knowledge of Payment Card Industry (PCI) Standards
- Experience implementing large-scale modernization initiatives
- Experience leading within the insurance or financial services industry
- Knowledge of containerization
What we offer
As Digital DNA’s Workplace of the Year 2020 & 2022 winners, we offer a generous benefits package that includes flexible annual leave entitlement, dental and healthcare insurance, an attractive pension package and discounts on gym memberships, public transport and parking.
Allstate invests heavily in your development, as an employee you will have access to multiple world-class learning platforms and courses from our award-winning in-house Learning & Development team.
We pride ourselves in providing clear career paths and opportunities for internal mobility allowing you to further develop within the organisation.
We encourage a better work life balance and you’ll have the opportunity to apply for various flexible working arrangements.
Statement on Fair Employment and Equal Opportunities
Allstate NI wishes to ensure equal opportunity is given to all job applicants. This company will not discriminate on the grounds of race, gender (including gender reassignment status), sexual orientation, religious belief, political opinion, marital status, age or disability.
We are an equal opportunities employer. We welcome applications from all suitably qualified persons. However, as women are currently under-represented in our workforce, we would particularly welcome applications from women. All appointments will be made on merit.
Applicants should note Allstate NI complete AccessNI background checks on all candidates offered a position.
The closing date for receipt of applications is Tuesday 16th August 2022
