IT Domain Architect – Frontend-Web Architect

The European Patent Office (EPO) is in the midst of a major transformation, building a DevOps practice and making agile principles a reality. It’s like nothing we’ve ever done before!

Our mission is to support innovation, competitiveness and economic growth across Europe. We pride ourselves on taking innovation seriously and are fully committed to our digital transformation.

Whilst preparing our next strategic plan, we are seeking talent to reinforce our teams and prepare the next generation of tools and practices, to increase the productivity of our workforce.

We are looking to recruit highly creative individuals with a broad range of skills across the field of IT, as well as developing a talent pool in anticipation of future openings.

The frontend/web architect combines strategic technology vision with hands-on implementation skills within the frontend/web domain and is part of the Engineering and Architecture department.

The role of the department is to ensure that the IT roadmap is correctly executed, making sure that standards, best practices and blueprints for modern application delivery patterns as well as cloud-native engineering and cloud-native operation practices are in place to deliver what is required under the EPO’s Strategic Plan.

As frontend/web architect you are fully at home in a cloud-native world and understand how to leverage these technologies as well as cloud platforms to benefit the frontend domain.

With us you will:

• Design reference architectures and implementations, i.e.:
  – Be responsible for identifying strategic technologies and approaches that can help EPO frontend/web teams achieve their goals in support of the EPO’s Strategic Plan
  – Co‑ordinate such initiatives with senior IT management, implement proofs of concept, document reference architectures and implementations and work hand-on with a pilot project to bring the initiative to life
  – Ensure that subsequent product teams adopt these best practices and implement them successfully
• Perform hands-on troubleshooting, i.e.:
  – When projects or product teams are facing frontend issues, you will join the problem team and work hands-on to find the cause of the problem and implement a solution
• Provide technical consultancy, support and guidance, i.e.:
  – Provide technical advice within the frontend domain on topics such as performance, security, library choices, CI/CD, browser support, UI/UX implementation, EPO design system, software design and maintenance, component choice
  – Assist in skill-assessments for new frontend developers or architects
• Undertake secondment to product teams, i.e.:
  – When the need arises, you may be seconded to work with one or more product teams that have a strategic nature or are attempting first-of-a-kind implementations

Apply if you have:

• Good communication and presentation skills
• Technical coaching skills
• Analytical problem-solving skills
• An independent and self-managing approach
• The ability to multi-task and manage time and priorities across multiple projects and contexts
  flexibility as an innovative thought-leader
• At least five years’ experience providing technical leadership to development teams
• “Full life-cycle” experience with projects from inception to production and maintenance

Technical skills:

• Broad and up-to-date knowledge, experience and interest in frontend and web technologies as well as (public) cloud platforms, CI/CD and cloud-native security (OIDC)
• Progressive delivery, API Management and ServiceMesh
• Frontend observability, OpenTelemetry
• CSS, HTML, JavaScript, TypeScript, Webpack, Redux, CRA
• Cross-device support
• Performance engineering and optimisation
• Experience working with and preferably on a (corporate) design system
• At least five years’ proven experience with React and Typescript

Minimum requirements:

• Diploma of completed studies at master’s level or – in exceptional cases – equivalent professional experience
• Excellent knowledge (at least C1) of one official language (English, French and German) and the ability to understand the other two; alternatively, excellent knowledge (at least C1) of English (in such cases, the willingness to learn the missing languages and to reach level B2 within a set time frame would be required)
• Citizenship of one of the member states of the European Patent Organisation

What we offer:

• An opportunity to participate in complex IT projects at the heart of the EPO’s digital transformation initiative
• Daily collaboration with a diverse, hard-working and united team of highly skilled and dedicated professionals from all over Europe
• Self-development opportunities through a broad range of training activities provided by our Talent Academy
• A challenging yet highly rewarding working environment
• A comprehensive and family-friendly benefits package
• A flexible working model
• Access to a wide variety of social activities and clubs
• Flexibility to work in either Munich or The Hague

Process:

The successful candidate will be selected on the basis of qualifications and relevant experience, supplemented as appropriate by interviews, tests and/or a personality questionnaire.

Key information:

• Job group: 4
• Grade: G7 to G10 (net basic) monthly salary* for this vacancy: EUR 6 459 to 9 364, depending on experience and location)
• Duration of appointment: Five years
• Career path: Technical
• Location: Hybrid based in Germany (Munich) or The Netherlands (The Hague)
• Application deadline:  29 March 2023
• Interviews planned: April and May 2023

* after deduction of EPO-internal tax and before deduction of staff contributions to the social security and pension schemes.

We welcome all applications for vacant positions. We consider each on its professional merits – regardless of your nationality, ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, disability, parental responsibilities, age, religion or belief.

Diversity & Inclusivity:

Our work environment
We believe that diversity is fundamental to our success. Our inclusive work environment respects, values and celebrates our individual differences. We want you to be yourself at work.