This role is suitable for people with a mix of debugging and development experience as well as outstanding communication skills, with a desire to do their best work. We are looking for people with empathy, writing skills, accountability, WordPress knowledge, and an ability to interpret code.
SMILE produces websites and products for universities and related organisations. Whilst we are a small team, we are setting the bar for quality and innovation in this space, helping them become more timely, personal and authentic. With millions of people using our websites every month, you'll play an important role in ensuring our output remains at the highest possible standards - it’s your opportunity to make a difference and do some of the best work of your career whilst you’re at it.
We expect our team to work hard and create the best, but you’ll be part of a relaxed, supportive and friendly team of talented and knowledgeable people that will help you to develop your skills. Importantly, we care about our employees - overtime is not a badge of honour and we put a lot of effort into planning to mitigate the need for it.
If you have any questions about SMILE, or you'd like to meet the team before you apply, give us a call on 0800 358 3608.
A day would involve:
- Prioritise and manage several open issues at one time.
- Supporting clients and teammates by solving service desk challenges and removing obstacles and blockers in the process.
- Talking clients through a series of actions, either via phone, email or chat, until they’ve solved a technical issue.
- Properly escalate unresolved issues to appropriate internal teams and log them on our issue tracker.
- Lead discussions using a variety of research, debugging, error reporting tools, and documentation.
- Ensuring the highest levels of quality, by maintaining websites, plugins and infrastructure.
- Writing and updating internal and client-facing documentation.
Required skills:
- Excellent communication skills. We’re a distributed team, so frequent and clear written communication is crucial. We require proficiency in written English.
- Self-motivated work ethic. Self-starters who love taking initiative and seeing things through to completion do well on our teams.
- The desire to learn. WordPress is a vast and nuanced ecosystem, and being a subject area expert is important.
- The ability to help others. Being able to educate others without patronising will help you to be a voice of the users.
- Deep knowledge of WordPress and experience with PHP. Whether you are currently supporting individuals with their sites or maintaining your own, we’re looking for theme, plugin, block editor, or e-commerce experience. It’s important to be able to read the code when diagnosing and potentially resolving problems.
Useful skills to have:
- A strong understanding of the Web; including familiarity with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, REST APIs, and Git. Experience with AWS is a bonus.
- Experience working primarily in a customer-facing role, including support and training.
- Excellent troublshooting skills that help you take big problems and break them down into manageable pieces with easy-to-understand solutions.
- Understanding of issues around scalability, performance and accessibility.
This is a part-time position, so the salary with be pro-rata'd. This is a remote position, but we are looking for people in the UK timezone.
We expect our staff and customers to adhere to our code of conduct at all times.
A growing part of our business is a product that allows universities and colleges to run online open days. These can take place outside of core business hours and sometimes, on weekends. You will be expected to help with some of these events.
How to apply
If this sounds of interest, follow the instructions below to submit an application.
Remember that your writing style and detail to attention is paramount in this position, so write a covering letter. Be sure to capitalise 'SMILE' and if you tell us about the typo in this job listing, we'll know you read things thoroughly!
In your letter you should cover:
- The time that you received the best customer service of your life and what you learnt from it.
- What you would do if a client raises an urgent issue with very few details.
- A problem that you recently overcame and how you did it. What makes it memorable?
If you’re reading this on a site other than wearesmile.com, please visit careers.wearesmile.com for the latest details on applying.