Principal Platform Engineer, Customer Platforms (Hybrid)

MARKS&SPENCER; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Marks & Spencer is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to drive the modernisation of mission-critical systems across our Customer Platform. You will lead cross-functional teams to design, build, and maintain software powering warehouse operations, reporting to the Senior Head of Software Engineering.

You will champion engineering excellence, contribute to our cloud and observability strategy, and mentor other senior engineers while shaping long-term technology and product investments.

Qualifications

• Significant track record of strategic and innovative thinking with execution
• Specialist in clean code and implementation of design patterns
• Depth of knowledge in information security with security controls embedded
• Confident driving system design conversations for high complexity
• Analytical skills to optimise processes and lead a specialist team
• Experience prototyping methods and mentoring others
• Influence on industry models and alignment with technical strategies
• Strong QA understanding and testing approaches
• Ability to lead senior engineers and technical customers to outcomes
• Cloud experience and automation expertise
• Experience with Observability and reliability tools (e.g., New Relic)
• Performance engineering expertise (load, web vitals)
• Senior leadership mentality with ownership mindset
• Entrepreneurial spirit in past organisations

Responsibilities

• Lead design to operations and launch of core product features or programmes
• Set technical direction and inform technology and product investments
• Champion Communities of Practice to raise engineering standards
• Lead by example through contributions to the engineering ecosystem
• Promote clean code and architectural practices across teams
• Advocate for productivity, delivery quality and operational excellence
• Drive DevOps to automate product development lifecycle
• Collaborate with engineering, technology and product leadership for alignment
• Develop and mentor senior engineering roles across the landscape
• Promote innovation across engineering teams
• Drive industrialisation of product-minded tech capabilities
• Inspire teams to achieve autonomy and maturity
• Unblock teams by providing direction and alignment
• Raise MS Tech profile through open-source contributions
• Support recruitment, onboarding and external brand outreach

Skills

System design leadership

Clean code & architecture

Cloud computing & security

Observability & reliability

DevOps & automation

Performance engineering

Tools

Java & Micronaut

ReactJS & Next.js

Azure Cloud & Dynatrace

Mule, Kafka, MQ

Blue Yonder Dispatcher

Job description

Marks & Spencer is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to drive the modernisation of mission-critical systems across our Customer Platform. You will lead cross-functional teams to design, build, and maintain software powering warehouse operations, reporting to the Senior Head of Software Engineering.

You will champion engineering excellence, contribute to our cloud and observability strategy, and mentor other senior engineers while shaping long-term technology and product investments.