Spend a day with our Newcastle R&D team

Our Day-to-Day Focus

Our team is responsible for creating and maintaining the essential supporting services for the ApplyOnline platform, with a primary focus on our document-related APIs.

Specifically, our work involves:

• Managing the LFile document storage system and overseeing the secure delivery of documents to various lender systems.
• Handling a wide range of integrations that are core to the application process, such as eSign, identity verification, credit reporting, and LMI services.

Exciting Projects: Exploring Large Language Models (LLMs)

We have some very interesting work in the pipeline involving the use of Large Language Models (LLMs). We are exploring how these can be used to assist with the automated verification of documents, which is an exciting step forward in how we handle data validation and improve efficiency within our systems.

Navigating Challenges: Balancing Legacy Systems and Innovation

Like many established platforms, we manage a number of legacy systems. The main challenge lies in balancing the ongoing maintenance of these systems with the development of new features.

We work through this by:

• Ensuring our developers get exposure to both legacy maintence and new feature development .
• Utilising this variety to help the team understand the full lifecycle of our software.
• Ensuring our foundational systems remain robust as we innovate.

Team Culture: Collaboration and Professional Growth

Collaboration is a pillar of how we operate. Our culture is built on:

• Mentorship and Coaching: We provide structured mentorship and coaching to our developers at all stages of their careers.
• Open Communication: We encourage active, open communication to solve technical hurdles.
• Peer Review: Most tasks go through a comprehensive peer-review process, which gives our developers confidence that their work is production-ready, and acts as a constant engine for professional growth and skill development.

End-to-End Ownership: A Unique Aspect

Something that often surprises people is that, despite being a relatively small team, we have end-to-end responsibility for our products.

This level of ownership means we handle everything from the initial design phase through to Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) and production. This is something you might not typically find at larger companies, and it gives our team a unique perspective on how their work impacts the whole business.

Advice for Early-Career Developers

For graduates or early-career developers who want to join our team, we look for two main things:

1. Skills and Mindset: A genuine passion for software development and a proven ability to think critically and analytically. We value people who can apply those skills to solve real-world problems, whether through university coursework, personal projects, or previous work experience.
2. Rationale and Depth: We are interested in the rationale behind the work. We want to understand why you chose certain technologies, the programming principles you applied, and what you learned during the process. Having a deep interest in figuring out how things work under the hood is more important to us than just knowing a specific language.

Supporting Individual Growth

We take a proactive approach to career development by working with team members to create Individual Development Plans (IDPs). We identify specific areas for growth and discuss progress during regular one-on-one meetings. This structure ensures our developers feel supported in their roles and helps them reach their long-term goals as professional software engineers.

Piqued your interest?If you are eager to take on complex challenges and see your work through from design to production, explore how you can join our team. Read more from our careers blog to find other profiles and stories, or join our online community to learn more about what is going on at NextGen and connect with us.