Principal Software Engineer - Customer Platforms

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

Job purpose

As part of the M&S Software Engineering team, you'll be joining a well-loved historic brand, working on solutions that serves millions of loyal customers and thousands of colleagues! With ethical values that run right through the company's core and technology leaders that truly understand software engineers and engineering, it's an exciting time as we're redefining ourselves into a digital first and engineering-led organisation, with the quality of our engineering team being a key differentiator.

We are seeking a passionate Principal Software Engineer to join us working across our Customer Platform team at M&S, where you will be a driving force behind the modernisation of mission-critical systems for M&S, as we scale. As a technical leader, you will be collaborating with multiple cross-functional teams to design, build, and maintain the software that powers our warehouse operations.

Reports to

Senior Head of Software Engineering

Key Accountabilities & Responsibilities

• The Principal Software Engineer role is the embodiment of 'solving problems through technology' with key responsibilities as follows:
• Lead technical excellence from design to operations and launch of core product features or strategic programmes
• Drive technical direction and influence our overall strategy informing decisions on both Technology and Product investments as well as teams' setup
• Champion Communities of Practice to help establish engineering excellence at M&S
• Lead by example via contributions to our engineering ecosystem
• Pioneer and promote methodologies like clean code and clean architecture
• Advocate for engineering productivity, delivery quality and operational excellence through a continuous ecosystem
• Drive DevOps practices to automate the Product development life cycle and ownership demeanour
• Partner with both Engineering, Technology and Product leadership to ensure strategies align
• Develop the best and mentor other senior engineering roles across the entire landscape
• Promote effective innovation across all of engineering
• Advocate and strategize for continuous industrialisation and product-minded tech capabilities
• Inspire ideas to foster purpose and mastery to engineering teams, leading them towards autonomy and maturity
• Amplify engineering teams by efficiently unblocking them with direction, leading upward, and establishing alignment
• Raise the profile of MS Tech through public content and contribution/creation into open-source technology
• Support recruitment, onboarding and internal and external brand outreach activities

Tech Stack

M&S uses a variety of technologies across the Food & International Food team and, as part of our modernization drive, will be introducing new ones. The sorts of technologies include:

• Java, Micronaut, PL/SQL
• ReactJS, Next.js
• Azure Cloud, Dynatrace (observability)
• Mule, Kafka, MQ
• Blue Yonder Dispatcher

Essential Experience

• Significant track record of strategic and innovative thinking, as well as execution and implementation
• Specialist in clean code and implementation of design patterns for common problems.
• Depth of knowledge in Information Security, you can design, quality review and quality assure solutions and services with security controls embedded.
• Confident driving system design conversations, building systems characterised by high levels of risk, impact, and business or technical complexity
• Able to analyse current processes, identify, and implement opportunities to optimise processes, and lead and develop a team of specialists to deliver service improvements
• Experience of using a variety of methods of prototyping. You know how to share methodologies and can mentor others. You look at strategic service design end to end
• Strong ability to influence industry-based models for the development of new technology applications. You develop effective implementation and procurement strategies, consistent with business needs. You ensure alignment to relevant technical strategies, policies, standards, and practices
• Strong understanding of quality assurance, testing quadrants and the testing pyramid, and how to apply them
• Ability to lead senior engineers and technical customers to a desired outcome, without prescribing it
• Authoritative skills at cloud computing (network, security, serverless, Kubernetes etc) and automation
• Experience with implementation of Observability and Reliability using market technologies (e.g.: New Relic)
• Good experience with Performance Engineering (load testing, derivations, tuning, core web vitals, page speed etc.)
• Expertise in reliability testing
• Able to influence people at senior levels and from the highly technical to non-technical

Desirable experience

• Previous software engineering community leadership experience
• Professional presentation delivery at internal and external events
• An ambition to be an open-source contributor, technology writer or speaker
• Advocate and experience of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery
• Advanced experience of DevOps: you build it, you run it
• Cares about the business and the bigger picture with significant prior examples
• Excellent communication skills, both written and spoken and able to adjust for different audiences
• A senior leadership mentality that is willing to take ownership.
• Demonstrable entrepreneurship in previous organisation(s)

Works closely with

You’ll be working closely with other Principal Software Engineers, Heads of Software Engineering, Heads of Product, Commercial, Finance, Software Engineering Managers, Software Engineers, and Product Managers to collaboratively address problems. There will be day-to-day interactions with Technical Programme Managers, who you’ll work with to constantly evolve your team’s ways of working. Depending on your team(s), you could also interact with other specialists such as Architects, Data Scientists, UX/UI Designers, and analytics authorities.

As a member of M&S Software Engineering, you’ll also have the opportunity to work with and learn from other engineers and specialists in the organisation through Business Platforms, Product Portfolios, Product Groups, other teams and Communities of Practice.

M&S is ready to push boundaries to lead the industry into a greener, speedier, more inspiring digital era. That’s why we’re revolutionising how we work and offering our most exciting opportunities yet! There’s never been a better time to be part of our team. Marks & Spencer aims to be an inclusive organisation, trusted and admired by our colleagues, customers and suppliers. Join us and make an immediate impact. We are committed to an active Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunities Policy, which starts with our recruitment and selection process, and we are happy to talk flexible working. We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process. If you consider yourself to have a disability or learning difficulty which means you are unable to complete the application process online, please get in touch either by phone on 0345 300 3725 or by email [e-mail] so we can make alternative arrangements for you.

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