Website Developer (Drupal)

At Forestry England we care for more land and trees than any other organisation in England. From small woodlands on the fringes of towns and cities, to vast areas like the ancient New Forest, for over 100 years we have been growing, shaping and caring for the nations forests.

The scale of what we do puts us in a unique position to tackle some of todays big issues.We are at the forefront of the climate crisis, using the latest scientific research to plan and plant forests which will survive in a changing climate.

We are the largest provider of outdoor recreation in the country with over 363 millionvisits last year providing spaces for people to boost their health/wellbeing.

We supply Englands largest amount of sustainably-sourced timber, and we conserve thousands of plant and animal species, increasing the biodiversity of our landscapes.

The role

Forestry Englands website is at the heart of ourbusiness - providing a quality user journey for all of our audiences, from mountain bikers and runners, to families, volunteers and timber buyers. As part of the web team, you will be at the core of shaping the website and influencing its development to drive more people to the nations forests.

As part of this role you will responsible for ongoing technical enhancement and maintenance of the website and supporting services, designing and developing responsive, high-quality digital solutions to drive positive and effective engagement with all our products and services.

Key work areas

• Engage in project assessment and scoping to help ensure that appropriate technical possibilities are explored.
• Take an active role in the design process from understanding requirements to reviewing and challenging wireframes, prototypes and final designs.
• Create high-quality, accessible and responsive functionality by working to industry standards and through team participation and code reviews.
• Ensure Forestry Englands website, and associated technology are always fully operational.
• Identify further opportunities for developing the website in-line with strategic objectives.
• Keep abreast of new web and mobile technologies, recommending best practice, suggesting areas for improvement and advising the organisation accordingly.
• Support internal teams to manage the website using the content management system.
• Manage external development from a technical and administrative point of view, provided by a digital agency.

Essential skills and experience

• Delivering large, professional websites and digital projects, using Drupal.
• Commercial experience working with LAMP / LEMP technology stack.
• Full-stack development experience (OO PHP, HTML, CSS, JS).
• Experience using Git in a team environment.
• Excellent communication skills. You must be comfortable communicating effectively with technical and non-technical team members, stakeholders and external partners.
• Full lifecycle involvement. Scoping work through to testing, deployment and support. Happy working as a sole developer and also managing external development from a requirements and technical review point of view.
• Working collaboratively with a digital agency to ensure accessibility and security is compliant at all times.
• Knowledge of open data platforms or API integrations.

Desirable skills and experience

• Commercial experience building Drupal 10 websites.
• Experience with cross-browser and cross-platform testing, including some automated testing.
• Working in a containerised development environment, ideally Docker based. We use Docksal.
• Experience working with a CSS preprocessor such as SASS or LESS (In terms of front end, (WIG would also be useful).
• Knowledge of web accessibility best-practice.
• Experience working in an Agile environment, especially knowledge of Kanban or Scrum.
• Managing a teams development with a git and gitflow approach (ideally using Bitbucket).
• An ability to mock-up screenshots for stakeholders to evaluate new front-end designs.
• Experience with any PHP debugger (we use xdebug).
• Experience of some kind of project management system, ideally JIRA.