Financial Times visual & data journalism — senior engineer

[Joanna Kao]

For details and to apply: https://ft.com/job

Summary: 

The Financial Times is hiring a full-time senior engineer to join the Visual and Data Journalism desk in London. We are a team of data-, visual- and developer- journalists reporting into the product & technology department, but working in the newsroom with reporters to develop engaging pieces of journalism including data visualisations, complex data analysis, immersive, visual-first explainers and investigations. We’re looking for creative, interdisciplinary thinkers with technical expertise — a background in journalism is not required but would be advantageous.

Role and responsibilities:

You will work on a variety of projects from complex investigations to fast-turnaround graphics and applications, both independently and as part of a team. You'll play a pivotal role in a variety of projects that have global impact. From ideation to delivery, you'll create new and innovative ways to find and tell stories. You might be designing systems to automate reporting election results one day, investigating companies by scraping millions of public filings the next, and building an online game explaining the economics of Uber after that. You will also develop and promote best practice in the use of technology for visual & data journalism to colleagues across the newsroom.

The kinds of projects you could be involved in: 

• Experimental visual storytelling  (e.g. Uber Game, The emotion business, How green is your electric vehicle?)

• Large-scale data gathering and analysis to inform news reporting (e.g. Inside the UK government’s venture capital portfolio, Coronavirus tracker) 

• Tools for data reporting and analysis (e.g. data/web scraper infrastructure, turning unstructured documents into structured data)

• Applications of machine learning and natural language processing techniques to news automation tasks or generating text from data

• Internal tools for creating user-facing content (e.g. custom D3/React-based graphics templates, flourish-message)

• Infrastructure and dependencies for the above (AWS resources, Heroku apps, Github actions, Fastly configs)

Characteristics we value:

• An interest in global business, finance and politics

• Developing creative solutions to diverse problems

• Being a positive, collaborative and proactive team player

• Mentoring and teaching colleagues with various levels of technical backgrounds — whether that be pair programming, lightning talks, good documentation, leading workshops or mentoring more junior members of the team

• Dedication to accessibility and a keen interest in design and UX principles (e.g. user testing, human-centred design, micro-interactions, animation)

• Flexibility and pragmatism to balance technical needs and editorial goals that may require rapid adaptation on deadline

• A desire to experiment and learn continuously to keep your skills at the forefront of industry best-practice

Happy to answer any questions at joann...@ft.com!

--

Joanna S. Kao (she/her)

Financial Times

PGP 0x81CFC062 | @joannaskao

T: +44 (0)20 7873 3116

M: +44 (0)7958 317 509

---

This email was sent by a company owned by Financial Times Group Limited ("FT Group"), registered office at Bracken House, One Friday Street, London, EC4M 9BT. Registered in England and Wales with company number 879531. This e-mail may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately, delete all copies and do not distribute it further.  It could also contain personal views which are not necessarily those of the FT Group.  We may monitor outgoing or incoming emails as permitted by law.