Head of Developer Experience & Agentic AI

Tesco Technology; Welwyn Garden City; Hybrid; GBP 110,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Annual bonus up to 45%

Car cash allowance

25 days holiday + personal day

Private medical insurance

Pension scheme with Tesco contribution

Maternity and adoption leave (26 weeks

Paternity leave 6 weeks

Job summary

Tesco Technology is seeking a senior leader to head developer experience and tooling, shaping how software is built across billions of customer interactions. Reporting to the Director of Engineering Effectiveness and Capability, you will lead globally distributed teams including in India and Hungary, balancing pace with security and reliability.

You will drive the SDLC evolution in the era of agentic AI, own budgets and vendor relationships, and translate strategy into enabling engineering teams

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading geographically dispersed teams and managers.
• Ability to shape strategic direction in a fast-evolving space with ambiguity.
• Strong decision making balancing multiple factors.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills across levels.
• Experience managing vendor relationships & procurement/legal collaborations.
• Understanding of budgets, forecasts & economics of software development & AI.
• Experience in product-led and data-led problem definition.
• Hands-on software engineering background to empathise with engineers.

Responsibilities

• Lead teams focused on developer experience and tooling, including agentic AI.
• Own budget, partnerships and vendor relationships with tooling providers.
• Evolve SDLC strategy in light of agentic AI developments.
• Advance developer tooling like GitHub, SonarQube and Nexus.
• Provide thought leadership across Technology on coding AI applications.
• Gather data, derive insights and identify opportunities to improve DX.

Skills

Strategic leadership

Vendor management

Budget and forecasting

Communication and influence

People management

SDLC knowledge

Agentic AI knowledge

Hands-on engineering empathy

Education

Bachelor's or higher in CS/Engineering

Tools

GitHub

SonarQube

Nexus

Claude Code / Codex / OpenCode

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Job description

Tesco Technology is seeking a senior leader to head developer experience and tooling, shaping how software is built across billions of customer interactions. Reporting to the Director of Engineering Effectiveness and Capability, you will lead globally distributed teams including in India and Hungary, balancing pace with security and reliability.

You will drive the SDLC evolution in the era of agentic AI, own budgets and vendor relationships, and translate strategy into enabling engineering teams