Savanta Hiring for Software Engineer | Canada, Waterloo, ON at Toronto, ON Full Time

Savanta is one of the fastest growing agencies in market research with teams in the UK, Americas, and APAC. With technology at the heart of our business, we inform and inspire clients to Make Better Decisions through powerful data, high impact consulting, and bespoke solutions. Our market-leading products and specialist teams in sector, methodology, and audience (e.g. students, and high net worth individuals), help clients ranging from global giants to locally loved brands, government bodies, and non-profits.

Our technology platform, online services, and the products we run on them underpin all of our operations. They enable us to provide a full service offering to our clients, from scripting, fieldwork, and data collection, through to analysis and delivery, including via direct integration with our APIs. We’re looking for talented software engineers to join our technology team and help us develop and grow that platform.

Our team is made up of roughly 30 people organized into cross-functional development teams that include engineers, a user experience designer, QA, and product management. We also have a support team who work directly with both internal and external customers.

Out Tech team is predominantly based around Cambridge (UK) with colleagues further afield in India and Australasia. Presently we work from home, and we see both hybrid and remote working being the norm going forward. For our Canadian hub we do ask that you live within easy travelling distance of Waterloo, ON to enable face to face working once a week as soon as that becomes viable.

Expansion of the technology team

Our evolving roadmap is full of ambitious and exciting delivery milestones across the full range of our products and services. We are also an increasingly global organization, with substantial and growing teams in the US, Canada, and India.

Our technology team is increasingly responsible for developing and supporting systems that are used round the clock by both ourselves, and our clients. As a result we’ve decided to begin the process of building a development team centred around Waterloo, Ontario, to the west of the Greater Toronto Area, in Canada.

We’re beginning to build up capabilities by hiring software engineers. The successful candidate will be attached to our UK-based development teams (working normal EST hours), allowing the opportunity to build knowledge and understanding of our business, platform, and systems. In time we envisage building the team up to enable us to have a full cross-functional development team based around Waterloo, and working on their own projects to enhance Savanta’s platform offer.

Software Engineer Role at Savanta

As a Software Engineer, you can expect to get hands-on, see the impact of your work very quickly. We are a small agile team: our projects last between two and six weeks and, although we often work on initiatives that run over longer timespans, we always divide these up into smaller projects and aim to ship regularly. We’ll also give you the room to learn from a supportive and collaborative team, with time set aside that you can use for professional development and more self-directed work on a regular basis.

Day to day, your key focus areas will include:
Full stack development, working with distributed systems;

Delivering a great user experience in the products you build;

Helping cross-functional teams deliver a variety of interesting projects;

Finding ways to build fast, scalable, flexible systems without blowing the budget;

Interacting directly with customers, understanding their needs, and generalizing them into something that can address the needs of an entire class of users, be they internal or external.

Our tech stack includes:
.NET 5 (shortly upgrading to 6): C#, with ASP.NET Web API, for our mid-tier and back-end services;

React and TypeScript for our front-end;

SQL Server for data storage;

Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform for hosting and infrastructure;

GitHub, Azure Dev Pipelines, and Octopus Deploy for continuous delivery

About You

You might be a fresh graduate with limited experience, or you might have a few years under your belt – we’re interested in hearing from anyone with up to around 4 years’ worth in a commercial environment.

You don’t need to know .NET or C# but experience in a comparable OO language such as Java or C++ is a definite advantage, as is experience of the more functional idioms available in these languages.

Likewise, you don’t need to know SQL Server, but exposure to any RDBMS and its dialect of SQL will definitely help you: if you’ve spent any time with PostgreSQL, MySQL, or Oracle, you’ll pick up SQL Server with no problems.

Exposure to user experience work is an advantage, but you don’t need it: as long as you regard the user interface as a key component of a product you’ll do fine here!

Ideally, you’ll also be someone who enjoys building and improving products, is comfortable with some ambiguity and shifting priorities in your work environment. It’s also important that you take pride in and stand by your work.

Why Join Us

With offices in the UK, US, Canada, and India, 450 staff globally, and ambitious growth plans, Savanta offers the benefits of scale, whilst our specialist teams make life at Savanta feel more like working at a smaller agency. Our client portfolio includes some of the world’s best known brands, including Google, LEGO, Unilever, HSBC, Sainsbury’s, ITV, Pandora, Wagamama, The Cabinet Office, Formula 1, Sport England, and Heineken.

Part of the vibrant Next 15 Communications Group, we have an entrepreneurial company culture that actively recognises and values its people and offers unrivalled scope for career development. As well as a competitive salary and unlimited annual leave, we offer an excellent benefits package covering health & wellbeing (gym membership, private medical, etc.), financial health (pension, life assurance, etc.) and flexible working practices, incl. hybrid working.

Savanta is committed to being an equal opportunities employer and continuously strives to be an employer of choice. Our people are our greatest asset – we value workplace diversity and inclusion, oppose all forms of unlawful discrimination, and welcome applications from suitably qualified candidates of all backgrounds.