Principal Software Engineer - HR

MARKS&SPENCER; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

20% colleague discount on M&S products

Competitive holiday allowance

Discretionary bonus schemes

Strong pension and life assurance

Tailored induction and training

Job summary

Marks & Spencer is seeking a Principal Engineer to set technical direction and lead architectural decisions for the People & Labour domain. You will mentor senior engineers, align technology with business goals, and drive modernisation of Azure-based microservices and integrations.

You will collaborate with HR, Payroll, and Product stakeholders to ensure secure, observable, and resilient systems, while promoting a strong engineering culture and high standards.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in system design and architecture for critical domains.
• Proven track record leading technical direction and architectural decisions.
• Strong mentoring and stakeholder management skills.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical strategy and roadmap for People & Labour sub-domains.
• Lead system design across teams and platforms, guiding API and SaaS integration decisions.
• Mentor managers and senior engineers to foster technical excellence.

Skills

System design

Technical leadership

Mentoring

Stakeholder management

Observability

Tools

Azure

APIs

Event-driven architecture

Job description

The Principal Engineer is the most senior individual contributor in engineering, setting technical direction, leading architectural decisions and aligning technology investment with business strategy. They combine deep technical expertise with mentorship and broad organisational influence to enable secure, resilient and maintainable solutions.

Aligned to the People & Labour sub-domains, this role leads the modernisation of the Azure microservices and integration estate supporting colleague, HR and workforce management capabilities. The ecosystem includes SaaS platforms such as Oracle HCM and Blue Yonder Workforce Management, along with Azure services that integrate with external providers. The successful candidate will combine strong engineering judgement with an understanding of people, HR and labour processes.

What you'll do

• Own the technical strategy and roadmap for the People & Labour sub-domains, with a particular focus on modernising Azure microservices, integrations and data flows.
• Lead system design and architecture across teams, products and enterprise platforms, guiding decisions on APIs, event-driven architecture, SaaS integration and build-versus-buy approaches.
• Mentor engineering managers, staff engineers and key engineering talent, fostering technical excellence, continuous improvement and high hiring standards.
• Partner with HR, Payroll, Workforce Management, Product, Architecture, Security and Data stakeholders to align technology and business objectives and communicate technical trade-offs effectively.
• Drive operational excellence through improved observability, resilience, incident management, CI/CD, developer experience and the adoption of AI across the product and software development lifecycle.

Who you are

Your skills and experience will include:

• Extensive experience in system design, architecture and technical leadership across complex, business-critical domains.
• Proven experience modernising Azure-based distributed or microservices architectures.
• Strong knowledge of APIs, asynchronous messaging, SaaS integration, observability, security, resilience and continuous delivery.
• Understanding of People and Labour domains, including areas such as core HR, colleague lifecycle, payroll, absence, time and attendance, labour forecasting or workforce scheduling.
• Strong mentoring, influencing and stakeholder management skills, with experience handling sensitive colleague and workforce data.

Tech stack

Experience with technologies and platforms including:

• Microsoft Azure
• Azure Microservices Architecture
• APIs and Integration Services
• Event-Driven Architecture and Asynchronous Messaging
• CI/CD and Modern Engineering Tooling
• Observability, Monitoring and Resilience Tooling
• Oracle HCM / MyHR
• Blue Yonder Workforce Management

What's in it for you?

Working at M&S means being part of something bigger - helping to deliver quality, value and service to millions of customers every day. We're inclusive, fast-moving and always evolving, with a strong sense of purpose and a focus on doing the right thing.

• 20% colleague discount on all M&S products and many third-party brands for you and someone in your household, available once you've completed your probation
• Competitive holiday allowance with the option to buy more
• Discretionary bonus schemes linked to your performance and ours
• Strong pension and life assurance to help plan for the future
• Tailored induction and training to support your development from day one
• Exclusive perks and savings through our M&S Choices portal
• Market-leading family policies, including parental, adoption and neonatal leave
• 24/7 wellbeing support, including virtual GP access and mental health services
• One paid volunteer day a year to support a cause that matters to you

Everyone's welcome

We are ambitious about the future of retail. We're disrupting, innovating and leading the industry into a more conscientious, inspiring digital era. We're transforming how we work together and offering our most exciting opportunities yet. Marks & Spencer strives to be an inclusive organisation, trusted and admired by our colleagues, customers and suppliers. Join us and make change happen.

We are committed to building diverse and representative teams, where everyone can bring their whole selves to work and be at their best. We support each other and work together to win together.

If you feel you'd benefit from any support or reasonable adjustments during any stage of the recruitment process, please don't hesitate to let us know when completing your application. This information will be picked up by our team, so we can try and put steps in place to help you be at your best through this process.

#LI-Hybrid #LI-DB2