Creative Developer I

The Creative Developer blurs the lines between coder and designer. This candidate is fluent in HTML, CSS, JavaScript and developing SPAs as well as the knowledge to work with the designs and help craft user experience. This candidate should be excited to collaborate with the design team to bring highly designed mocks to life with motion and interaction as you are writing clean, readable, and reusable code. The creative developer will be a part of the creative process from brainstorming to launch by helping ideate creative solutions, build prototypes and inform the user experience. They will have influence over development standards, needs, and creative execution. They will consistently be collaborating with the design and story team to communicate their technical knowledge and ideas to push the creative forward. They will be able to explain challenges to non-technical teammates to grow their knowledge and thinking. The creative developer will be working closely with designers and storytellers to deliver our readers a smooth user experience.  (Past team projects: , , , , and )

Departmental Summary:

The Visual Storytelling division of ESPN Creative Studio is a team of Visual Journalists, Photo Editors, Developers, Designers, Concept Artists and Animators whose work reaches across all platforms at ESPN. We are responsible for editorial design and photography on the ESPN website and app, including custom microsites, special projects, branding, illustration, and data visualization. We concept, design, and direct television graphics for all of ESPN’s studio shows, live events, and ESPN+ original content as well as lead the creative identity for Andscape. This role is fully remote.

Responsibilities:

• Develop responsive SPAs using HTML, CSS and JavaScript and some experience with frameworks like React, Astro and Svelte.
• Enhance static designs with animation and interaction. Understanding and passion for motion design and user experience with examples of their work.
• Build video and audio players, slideshows, scroll-based effects (parallax), text effects (fading and sliding), and user interactions (hovers, mouse/touch tracking).
• Visualize data on charts, lists and maps
• Test, diagnose, solve browser and device issues
• Optimize site and content performance
• Help maintain and advance our product ecosystem of reuseable code
• Recommend new technologies and set development expectations on existing ones to project team
• Review analytics and work to increase user engagement
• Positive and active collaboration with Designers, Copy Writers and Photo Editors
• Being highly communicative and collaborative. Available for slack and zoom regularly during business hours
• Open to critical feedback and collaboration throughout the project with the team
• Open to sharing projects, pair programming and discussion with other developers
• Look at projects retrospectively and recommend ways to make positive change on next one

Qualifications:

• Minimum of 3 years of experience writing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
• Portfolio and/or online samples showing track record of developing high-quality, responsive websites on mobile, tablet and desktop
• Demonstrated understanding and excitement for motion, animation, and interaction
• Experience with animation libraries (GSAP)
• Demonstrated attention for detail by converting designs to pixel-perfect HTML and CSS
• Experience testing, diagnosing, and solving browser and device issues
• Solves problems independently though also willing to ask for help and encourage discussion
• Light experience working with designs and design applications
• Collaborating on user experience
• Ability to work within project-based deadlines
• Insatiable thirst to learn and grow by researching technologies and storytelling opportunities
• Excitement and enthusiasm to grow with a team of creatives who love their jobs and care about producing great work
• Desire to be a part of a medium-sized team in a large company
• Regular meetings and discussion around projects and culture initiatives

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience working with data sets and building charts (Custom and/or with a library)
• Experience working with location-based data and implementing 3rd party map services 
• Experience with collaborative tools (Github, Asana, Jira)
• Experience with design tools (Figma, Photoshop)
• Experience with connecting 3rd party services through APIs and
• Bonus for experience with integration tools like Make, Zapier or Power Automate

Required Education:

• High School Diploma or Equivalent 

Preferred Education:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent 

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