Head of Software Development - DevEx & 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

Cursor

Job description

About the role

This is a unique opportunity to play a leading role in how software products are built within a leading global retailer with real impact across millions of customers and thousands of software engineers. Reporting to the Director of Engineering Effectiveness and Capability, you will lead teams that focus on overall developer experience, developer tooling and will lead our efforts to evolve how software engineering is done in the world of agentic AI. You’ll play a key role in shaping strategy as well as driving execution. You’ll provide thought leadership through keeping your knowledge and expertise in agentic coding up to date through continual evaluation of new technologies and practices and be able to balance pace of delivery with the need to be secure, resilient and prudent. The impact of your work will be felt by over 2,500 software engineers. You’ll manage and provide leadership to teams based in India and Hungary.

You will be responsible for

• Budget ownership, partnership and commercial relationships with existing suppliers in the developer tooling and agentic coding space. Continual evaluation of new tools and build vs buy decisions.
• The ongoing evolution and operational excellence of our key developer tools such as GitHub, SonarQube Nexus and others that support software development activities.
• Key input into the definition and continual evolution of the strategy for how our SDLC evolves in the light of Agentic AI.
• Accountability and leadership to execute how agentic AI is enabled for development teams.
• Thought leadership across the whole Technology organisation around Agentic AI for coding and other aspects of the SDLC.
• Overall ownership of developer experience including gathering quantitative and qualitative data, driving insight and identifying areas of opportunity.

You will need

• Proven experience of leading geographically disparate teams and managing managers.
• Ability to shape strategic direction; deal with ambiguity and operate autonomously in a fast‑evolving space making timely decisions without perfect data and be able to operate in an intent‑based way vs seeking approval.
• Strong ability to make decisions that balance multiple, often conflicting factors.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills downwards, across and upwards.
• Proven experience in managing significant vendor relationships, evaluating offerings and working effectively with procurement and legal teams.
• Strong understanding of budgets, forecasts and the economics of software development activity and agentic AI.
• Experience of working in an organisation that values product‑led and data‑led problem definition and discovery.
• A solid understanding of all aspects of a typical SDLC and opinions on where AI can have the biggest impact.
• Prior experience as a hands‑on software engineer which allows you to have a strong understanding and empathy of engineers’ needs and views.
• Experience in leading teams who ‘run what they build’, managing effective operational support and on‑call engineers.
• Ideally: prior experience of working in a developer experience, platform engineering or similar role.

Skills

• You are naturally curious and have built up expertise with agentic coding tools such as Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode or Cursor but you have a bias towards solving problems not dogmatic solutions.
• Ability to keep knowledge up to date through effective building of networks, data sources and ability to identify and distil key trends and directions and then apply context to how you interpret them.
• Strong system design and architecture skills and instincts.
• Exceptional people management skills including how to manage talent and performance and grow the people around you.

Whats in it for you?

• Annual bonus scheme of up to 45% of base salary.
• Car Cash Allowance.
• Holiday starting at 25 days plus a personal day (plus Bank holidays).
• Private medical insurance.
• Retirement savings plan - save between 6% - 10% and Tesco will contribute 1.5 times this amount.
• 26 weeks maternity and adoption leave (12 months service required at the qualifying date) at full pay, followed by 13 weeks of Statutory Maternity Pay or Statutory Adoption Pay, we also offer 6 weeks fully paid paternity leave.

The above information is a shortened summary, refer to our policies for full details.

About Us

You might know us as a supermarket, technology company or even for our award‑winning mobile network. Truth is, we’re all of those things, and much more. Our colleagues work with one goal in mind, helping to make every day a little better for our customers, colleagues and communities all over the world. No two customers are the same, neither are our colleagues. At Tesco, we champion a balance that lets you thrive both in and out of work. Spend 60% of your week collaborating with colleagues at our office locations or local sites and the rest remotely. Whether you're just kicking off your career, juggling passions, or navigating big life events, we're here to support you. We always welcome a conversation about flexible working, so talk to us throughout your application about how we can support. We’re proud to be an accredited Disability Confident Leader, where everyone’s welcome.