Software Developer (Internal Systems & Applications)

1. Purpose of the role
Robina Shipping is building an in-house development capability. This role is the technical owner of our core business system and the internal tools and customer-facing applications built around it. The successful candidate will maintain and extend the software, take ownership of an existing customer web application prototype and bring it to production, build reporting and automation for Finance and Operations, and document the estate as they go.
This is not a vendor-management role. All development, support and documentation are performed internally. The person appointed will work directly with the hiring manager and with Finance, Operations and Commercial teams, and will have genuine ownership of architecture decisions.
2. Key responsibilities
2.1 System ownership and maintenance
• Own the software data model, integrations and security configuration; act as the internal authority on how the system is built.
• Diagnose and resolve defects raised by Finance, Operations and Commercial — including document status and workflow issues, period and date validation, account-code restrictions, and reporting/export gaps.
• Maintain proper environment separation (development, test, production) and release discipline; no direct development in production.
• Manage solutions and deployments through a controlled ALM process.
2.2 Further development and the customer web application
• Take handover of an existing internal prototype of a customer-facing web application, assess it, and take it through to a secure, supported production release.
• Design and build authenticated external access for customers, including identity, roles and row-level data separation.
• Deliver further enhancements to software and to internal tooling as business requirements emerge.
2.3 Integrations and automation
• Build and maintain API and webhook integrations between software and internal or third-party systems, with correct handling of retries, duplicates, throttling and failure states.
• Develop AI-assisted automation and agent-based workflows where they measurably reduce manual effort, applying appropriate judgement about where automation is and is not suitable for financial data.
2.4 Data, reporting and dashboards
• Build dashboards and management reporting over operational and financial data.
• Produce data consolidation, reconciliation and analysis work in Python and Excel — including multi-source datasets requiring deduplication, validation and audit of existing models.
• Automate recurring reports so they run without manual intervention.
2.5 Documentation — a core deliverable, not an afterthought
• Produce and maintain documentation of software as it exists today: data model and entity relationships, integration map, security role matrix, environment and deployment notes, and a known-defects register.
• Document all new development to the same standard: architecture notes, API specifications, runbooks, release notes and end-user guides.
• Keep documentation version-controlled and current. Documentation completeness is an explicit performance measure for this role.
2.6 Technical support
• Provide first-line and second-line support to internal users; triage, prioritise and communicate status clearly to non-technical colleagues.
• Distinguish root-cause fixes from workarounds and drive permanent resolution.
3. Essential requirements
3.1 Database and platform architecture
• Demonstrable working knowledge of Microsoft Dataverse: tables, relationships, alternate keys, choice and lookup behaviour, calculated and rollup columns, business rules.
• Solution and environment management, including managed versus unmanaged solutions, solution layering and dev-to-production ALM.
• Relational data modelling fundamentals: normalisation, keys, indexing, referential integrity, transactions.
• SQL, including the Dataverse TDS endpoint, for reporting and reconciliation.
• Data migration and bulk operations: dataflows, import and export, deduplication.
3.2 Security, RLS and authentication
• Dataverse security model: security roles, business units, teams, field-level security and hierarchy security — and how these differ from database-level row-level security.
• Microsoft Entra ID: app registrations, service principals, application versus delegated permissions.
• OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect: flows, tokens, refresh, scopes.
• External identity for customer-facing access (Entra External ID / B2C, or Power Pages web roles and table permissions).
• Secrets management and least-privilege access design.
3.3 Integration
• REST API design and consumption; Dataverse Web API, OData queries and batch operations.
• Webhooks in both directions — registering outbound webhooks and receiving inbound ones with signature verification, retry handling and idempotency.
• Serverless or middleware components (Azure Functions, Logic Apps or equivalent).
3.4 AI-assisted development
• Practical, day-to-day working knowledge of Claude Code, Codex or equivalent AI coding tools as part of a real development workflow — not occasional experimentation.
• AI agent development: tool and function calling, retrieval-augmented generation, prompt design and evaluation. Candidates should be able to describe systems they have actually shipped.
3.5 Application development
• Front-end fundamentals: HTML, CSS and JavaScript or TypeScript; a modern framework such as React.
• Ability to take over, assess and extend an existing codebase written by someone else, and to give an honest recommendation on refactor versus rebuild.
3.6 Data and reporting tooling
• Python for data work: pandas, openpyxl or xlsxwriter for formatted Excel output with live formulas, and scripting for automation and scheduling.
• Expert-level Excel: pivot tables, SUMIFS and INDEX/MATCH, Power Query, data validation, and the ability to audit and repair a broken workbook.
• Dashboard development — Power BI preferred, with the ability to hand-build HTML dashboards where a full BI deployment is not warranted.
3.7 Professional and language requirements
• High written and spoken English proficiency. The role produces documentation, specifications and defect reports read across a multinational, multidisciplinary organisation. Written English will be assessed.
• Version control (Git) and disciplined branching and release practice.
• Reconciliation discipline — the habit of validating outputs against a second source before releasing them.
• Discretion in handling commercial, financial and payroll data.
4. Desirable
• Working knowledge of accounting concepts: journals, chart of accounts, IFRS presentation principles, VAT invoicing.
• Shipping, freight forwarding or logistics domain exposure.
• Dataverse plugin or custom API development in C# / .NET.
• Power Platform breadth: model-driven apps, canvas apps, Power Automate, Power Pages.
• Azure cloud fundamentals for hosting internal applications.