Trade and Customs Consultant

Chartered Institute of Export & International Trade

TECHNICAL CONSULTANT JOB DESCRIPTION POSITION:                       Technical Consultant EMPLOYER:                    The Chartered Institute of Export & International Trade POSITION STATUS:        Permanent/Full Time REPORTS TO:                 Technical Manager LOCATION:                      Remote / Hybrid   The Chartered Institute of Export & International Trade (CIOE&IT) is the leading UK membership association for those working in exporting and importing. These are exciting times in international trade and we’re seeing sustained growth in the demand for our services and qualifications – as a result, our team needs to grow too. We are seeking a highly skilled a Technical Consultant for the Advisory Department. This is primarily a remote role; however, you will be required to visit clients as requested and occasional visits to our Peterborough and London offices.   JOB BRIEF: The main function of this job is to represent the Chartered Institute in the provision of training and advisory services in a broad range of international trade and customs disciplines. The successful candidate needs to be confident providing training and consultancy, both face-to-face and virtually. RESPONSIBILITIES: * Helpline: Support delivery of commercial contracts for a Helpline service for clients as well as the business member helpline, running monthly reports and collecting data on enquiries to support the membership, marketing and content teams. * Training development: Create, update and deliver learning content for training courses, presentations and webinars, ensuring materials are current, engaging, accessible and professionally delivered * Advisory services: Provide expert advice to clients on key disciplines of international trade and customs, including customs compliance and best practices within their required field * Content contribution: Support the development of content for the website, publications and member platforms on trade-related topics. * Industry representation: Participate in government forums and working groups, representing the Chartered Institute. * Stakeholder engagement: Act as a regional and local champion, engaging with stakeholders and identifying opportunities to support and grow the Chartered Institute’s membership. * Public speaking: Attend industry events on behalf of the Chartered Institute, both face-to-face and online through webinars and podcasts and develop online social media content to promote the work of the Chartered Institute. * Ambassadorial role: Uphold values and integrity of the Chartered Institute through professional conduct and performance. * Continuous learning: Ability to remain updated on emerging international customs and trade regulations, trade policies and procedures, both in the UK and internationally, to be able to determine the impact for clients and effectively apply knowledge and educate stakeholders * Identify opportunities to implement information technology tools that will enhance, improve and automate the import and export compliance activities. * Data: To maintain the integrity of the business through accurate and timely recording of all relevant data. * To communicate in an articulate, professional and informed manner, across all levels of the business, both internally and externally, providing a clear transmission of information with businesses, to help them navigate the evolving global trade landscape * Pursue improvements in procedures and services to enhance efficiency and cost-effectiveness * Undertake any other reasonable duties commensurate with a changing environment and a proactive business Any other duties as may reasonably be required by the Advisory Director to support the team and wider organisation.     DESIRED SKILLS SET AND EXPERIENCE:   * Strong knowledge of customs and international trade * Strong presentation skills, proven record of delivering training and/or advisory services * Strong verbal and written communication skills, along with experience of content development * Significant hands-on experience managing international trade compliance matters * Comprehensive understanding of UK and EU customs laws and regulations * Strong project management skills, with advanced proficiency in Microsoft applications * Proven ability to engage with both internal and external stakeholders to collect information and coordinate projects, ensuring customer needs are met proactively * Ability to work effectively under pressure, solve problems, and support teams in meeting or exceeding customer deadlines. * Track record of establishing, implementing, and maintaining standards, while continuously seeking improvement opportunities. * Continuous improvement, innovation and strategic thinking mindset * Self-starter, having the ability to work using own initiative with a strong focus on quality * Positive attitude and outstanding communication * Must have strong internet access at home       NICE TO HAVE BUT NOT ESSENTIAL: * Level 4 or above in an international trade related qualification or, learning and teaching skills * The ability to build effective and credible relationships across a range of stakeholder groups both internally and externally.   HOW TO APPLY: Fill in your details below and upload your CV for review by the Talent Acquisition team.  If you are having difficulty completing the application and would like some support or if you have questions, please contact our Head of Talent Acquisition, Gary Watson on: 01733 404 400 g.watson@export.org.uk

Cerve

About Cerve At Cerve, our mission is to build the data foundation the €10 trillion food and beverage supply chain has been missing. We operate the supply chain intelligence infrastructure for F&B. With this foundation in place, the industry gains the visibility, automation and shared insight needed to expand margins, tackle waste, food security and food borne illness at scale. About the role As a Solutions Engineer at Cerve, you'll be the bridge between our platform and our customers' businesses. You'll own customer projects from first conversation to production deployment, building the integrations and solutions for food and beverage companies. This is a customer-facing engineering role. You'll spend as much time understanding problems as solving them, working directly with customers to scope requirements, then building and delivering solutions that actually work in their environment. You'll collaborate closely with our Engineering and Product teams, but you'll own your projects end-to-end. We're looking for a pragmatic generalist who can move fast without cutting corners that matter. Someone who's as comfortable on a customer call as they are in a codebase. What you’ll do: As a Solutions Engineer, you'll work directly with our customers to understand their challenges and deliver solutions that solve real problems. You'll own projects end-to-end, from initial discovery through to production deployment, while collaborating closely with our engineering and product teams. * Customer Delivery & Ownership: Lead customer engagements from technical scoping through implementation. You'll be the primary technical point of contact, translating business requirements into working software and ensuring successful outcomes. * Solution Design & Development: Design and build integrations and custom solutions that connect our customers' systems with Cerve's platform. Balance pragmatic delivery with long-term maintainability, knowing when to move fast and when to build for scale. * Hands-on Engineering: Write production code across the stack. Build backend services, work with APIs, and develop frontend interfaces as needed. You're comfortable picking up whatever technology the project requires. * Technical Communication: Explain complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders. Document solutions clearly and ensure customers can maintain and extend what you build. * Quality & Reliability: Deliver solutions that work in production. Implement appropriate testing, monitoring, and observability based on each project's needs. You are: * High Agency: You don't wait to be told what to do. When you see a problem, you solve it. When something's unclear, you figure it out. * A Pragmatic Problem Solver: You balance speed with sustainability, knowing when to ship fast and when to build for the long term. * An Excellent Communicator: You can run a customer call, explain technical trade-offs to a non-technical buyer. * Comfortable with Ambiguity: Requirements change. Scope evolves. You thrive when the path forward isn't perfectly defined and can make sensible decisions with incomplete information. * Genuinely Ownership-Oriented: You treat customer projects like they're your own. You follow up, you follow through and you don't let things fall through the cracks. You have: * 5-8 years designing, developing and delivering software in consulting, agency or customer-facing roles. * Hands-on experience building data products and integrations. Working with APIs, SDKs, and messy real-world data sources (CSVs, legacy databases, non-standard formats). * Generalist technical experience: Strong fundamentals across backend and frontend, comfortable picking up new technologies quickly (we use Go, Python, and React, but aptitude beats specific experience). * Production experience with cloud infrastructure (GCP preferred) and databases (SQL and NoSQL). * A track record of owning projects end-to-end, from customer conversations through to deployment. We are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone feels welcome and valued. We believe that diversity of thought and experience is essential to our success, and we are particularly interested in candidates who can bring a different perspective to our team, regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or career status.

Valtech

Why Valtech? We’re the experience innovation company - a trusted partner to the world’s most recognized brands. To our people we offer growth opportunities, a values-driven culture, international careers and the chance to shape the future of experience.  THE OPPORTUNITY At Valtech, you’ll find an environment designed for continuous learning, meaningful impact, and professional growth. Whether you're pioneering new digital solutions, challenging conventional thinking or building the next generation of customer experiences, your work will help transform industries.  We are proud of:  * The work we do and the innovation we drive  * Our values of share, care and dare  * A workplace culture that fosters creativity, diversity and autonomy  * Our borderless, global framework, which enables seamless collaboration    The Role   We are seeking a highly experienced Technical Lead with 8+ years of confirmed Salesforce platform experience to lead a product team within the SF Core workstream of a global Luxury Maison’s Salesforce CRM Factory. SF Core is the Factory’s Priority 1 workstream and its largest team, covering the Maison’s core Sales Cloud CRM — Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities, and the custom clienteling and boutique retail data model built on top of it. Operating as the senior-most technical authority within your squad and as a key technical reference across the Factory, you will set architecture direction, safeguard platform integrity, and mentor the next generation of Tech Leads — delivering robust, scalable CRM solutions that power boutique retail operations, omnichannel clienteling, and luxury client experiences across 5 continents. If you believe that great software and haute couture share the same DNA — precision, craft, and zero tolerance for defects — this role is for you.  * A curious problem solver who challenges the status quo  * A collaborator who values teamwork and knowledge-sharing  * Excited by the intersection of technology, creativity and data  * Experienced in Agile methodologies and consulting (a plus)  Role & Responsibilities Technical Leadership & Architecture:  * Own end-to-end technical strategy and implementation across multiple features and workstreams — from design to deployment to documentation. * Define and drive multi-quarter architecture roadmaps aligned with the Maison’s IS model, in direct partnership with System Architects and Enterprise Architects. * Anticipate architectural constraints and technical risks ahead of PI Planning and macro-grooming, influencing the roadmap before commitments are made. * Exercise final veto authority on fast-fixes or shortcuts that risk destabilising the Salesforce platform — quality and long-term platform health are non-negotiable. * Act as the escalation point for cross-team technical decisions and arbitrate trade-offs between squads. * Represent the Factory in architecture governance forums and contribute to enterprise-wide technical standards. Development & Code Quality:  * Guide the implementation of clean, well-tested Apex, Lightning Web Components (LWC), and platform-native code with full automated unit test coverage (TDD standard), stepping in hands-on where needed. * Define the technical strategy for automated business and regression testing across the squad. * Own the code review framework and pair programming culture; set and audit software craftsmanship standards Factory-wide. * Define and continuously improve CI/CD pipeline standards; drive automation of testing, deployment, and delivery processes. * Own the technical debt strategy — prioritise, negotiate, and drive down debt for long-term platform stability. Run Activities (20% of Capacity):  * Act as the ultimate Level 3 escalation point in the incident management chain for complex, high-severity production issues. * Oversee corrective maintenance quality — validate root-cause analyses, fixes, and documentation produced by the squad. * Arbitrate and prioritise complex change requests from analysis through delivery. * Approve and oversee sensitive data retrieval requests from Salesforce production environments. * Drive continuous improvement of the support knowledge base and incident-prevention practices. Build Activities (80% of Capacity):  * Own the technical delivery of complete project solutions (code + tests + documentation) aligned to specifications and enterprise quality standards. * Lead roadmap elaboration, effort estimation, and sprint planning across the squad, and contribute to Factory-level capacity planning. * Mentor and grow Developers and Tech Leads (C3–C4) toward technical excellence and autonomy; act as a career reference for technical talent. * Own architecture decision records, solution design docs, and technical documentation standards across the squad. * Drive alignment and standards enforcement across the broader Salesforce developer community within the organisation. Agile & Collaboration:  * Lead and actively shape SAFe ceremonies: Daily Scrum, Sprint Reviews, Retrospectives, and PI Planning. * Collaborate closely with Paris-based product teams with near-real-time business hours overlap (08:30–18:30 CET). * Own technical debt and risk tracking in JIRA; oversee incident and demand logging discipline in ServiceNow. * Proactively identify and champion automation and AI-augmentation opportunities with the Factory Manager and Enterprise Architects.   Required Skills & Qualifications Salesforce Technical Expertise:  * 8+ years of confirmed, hands-on Salesforce platform development and architecture experience, with strong depth in Sales Cloud (Accounts, Contacts, Leads, Opportunities, Campaigns). * Proven experience customising and scaling the core Sales Cloud data model for high-volume, multi-region retail or clienteling use cases. * Expert-level mastery of Apex (triggers, batch jobs, async patterns) and Lightning Web Components (LWC). * Deep expertise with Salesforce declarative tools: Flows, Process Builder, Validation Rules, and Permission Sets. * Advanced SOQL/SOSL query optimisation and governor limits mastery, including large-data-volume design patterns. * Salesforce DX (SFDX), VS Code Salesforce Extensions, and Git-based development workflows. * CI/CD tooling for Salesforce: Copado, Gearset, or equivalent deployment pipeline tools — including pipeline design and governance. * Strong Test Driven Development (TDD) discipline with high unit test coverage standards, enforced across a squad. * Advanced integration patterns: REST/SOAP APIs, Platform Events, Change Data Capture, and event-driven architecture. Engineering Practices:  * Proven track record setting and enforcing coding standards across multiple squads or a Factory-wide community. * Pair programming and mentoring culture — experienced coaching Tech Leads as well as Developers. * Ownership of technical documentation standards: architecture decision records, solution design docs, and operational runbooks. * Advanced Agile / SAFe methodology experience: PI Planning, Sprint cadences, and cross-squad backlog management. Tools & Platforms:  * Incident & Demand Management: ServiceNow. * Project & Feature Management: JIRA. * Documentation & Knowledge Management: Confluence. * Development: Salesforce DX, VS Code, Git. * Agile Framework: SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework). Soft Skills:  * Excellent English communication skills — written and spoken (mandatory). * Strong ownership mindset with proven ability to lead, influence, and mentor peers and Tech Leads. * Detail-oriented with zero-defect delivery attitude and proactive, senior-level problem-solving approach. * Experienced working with and leading nearshore/offshore teams alongside Paris-based product squads. * Comfortable operating as a technical reference and stakeholder-facing lead across the organisation.   Mandatory Certifications:  * Salesforce Platform Developer I — All profiles. * Salesforce Platform Developer II — All profiles (mandatory). * JavaScript Developer I — All profiles. * Platform App Builder — All profiles. * Development Lifecycle & Deployment Architect — Mandatory. * Integration Architect — Mandatory. Preferred Qualifications (Nice to Have):  * Salesforce Sales Cloud Consultant certification. * Exposure to Salesforce Service Cloud or Field Service Lightning (Priority 2 workstream — useful for cross-Factory collaboration, not core to this role). * Exposure to Salesforce Marketing Cloud (AMPscript, Journey Builder, Data Extensions) (Priority 3 workstream — not core to this role). * Knowledge of Salesforce MuleSoft or other middleware/integration platforms. * Extensive experience working in Luxury, Retail, or Fashion industry CRM environments. * Strong understanding of Salesforce AI capabilities: Einstein, Agentforce, or Copilot features. * Sharing & Visibility Architect certification. * Identity & Access Management certification. * Application Architect or System Architect certification (CTA track). * French language proficiency (Nice to Have — product teams based in France). If you do not meet all the listed qualifications or have gaps in your experience, we still encourage you to apply. At Valtech, we recognize that talent comes in many forms, and we value diverse perspectives and a willingness to learn.  COMMITMENT TO REACHING ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE  We design experiences that work for all kinds of people - and that starts with our own teams. At Valtech, we’re intentional about building an inclusive culture where everyone feels supported to grow, thrive and achieve their goals. No matter your background, you belong here. Explore our Diversity & Inclusion site to see how we’re creating a more equitable Valtech for all.    THE BENEFITS   This is a fulltime position based in Bengaluru. Beyond a competitive compensation package, we offer:  * Flexibility, with remote and hybrid work options (country-dependent)  * Career advancement, with international mobility and professional development programs  * Learning and development, with access to cutting-edge tools, training and industry experts  Our benefits are tailored to each location. Your Talent Partner will provide full details during the hiring process.     YOUR APPLICATION PROCESS Once you apply, our Talent Acquisition team will review your application. Your CV should cover key information on relevant experiences and expertise. We do not require information such as age, gender, marital status, or a headshot in your application. We review all candidates based on skills, experience, and potential. ⚠️ Beware of recruitment fraud! Only engage with official Valtech email addresses ending in @valtech.com. We are committed to inclusion and accessibility. If you need reasonable accommodations during the interview process, please either indicate it in your application or let your Talent Partner know.     ABOUT VALTECH Valtech is the experience innovation company that exists to unlock a better way to experience the world. By blending crafts, categories, and cultures, we help brands unlock new value in an increasingly digital world.  At the intersection of data, AI, creativity, and technology, we drive transformation for leading organizations, including L’Oréal, Mars, Audi, P&G, Volkswagen Dolby, and more.  At Valtech, we don’t just talk about transformation. We make it happen. Our people are the heart of our success, and we foster a workplace where everyone has the support to thrive, grow and innovate.  Are you ready to create what’s next? Join us.