Senior Software Java Engineer - Identity

Tesco; Welwyn Garden City; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible working

Disability Confident Leader

Job summary

Tesco is seeking a software engineer to design, build and support high-performing, distributed authentication APIs powering experiences across online, phone, and in-store touchpoints. You’ll lead technical design, work with product teams, and mentor engineers while maintaining a DevOps culture and building scalable systems.

Join a team handling billions of API calls weekly with a stack including Java, Kotlin, Spring Boot, PostgreSQL, Cassandra, Kubernetes, Azure, and Kafka.

Qualifications

• Expert proficiency in at least one major programming language (Java preferred).
• Significant experience designing, building and supporting large-scale distributed systems.
• Strong understanding of software engineering principles (SOLID, design patterns).
• DevOps mindset with production systems support and incident analysis experience.
• Experience leading technical initiatives across multiple teams.
• Knowledge of identity and access management concepts (OAuth 2.0, OIDC) advantageous.

Responsibilities

• Designing, building and maintaining high-performing, mission-critical systems.
• Lead technical design of complex features and initiatives.
• Collaborate with product managers to shape requirements and deliver outcomes.
• Provide technical leadership across teams and drive engineering standards.
• Own production systems, resolve incidents and improve reliability and security.
• Mentor engineers and contribute to recruitment and interview processes.

Skills

Java

Distributed systems

Collaboration

Design principles

DevOps

Leadership

IAM concepts

Tools

Kubernetes

Azure

Kafka

PostgreSQL

Cassandra

Spring Boot

Kotlin

Job description

The engineers in our team build the APIs that securely authenticate customers across all touchpoints with Tesco around the globe: online, over the phone, and in-store. You’ll focus on making our experiences as streamlined for customers as possible, by exploring innovative authentication factors to dynamically assess the risk of each individual customer session. Your work will often be at the heart of new propositions across the Tesco Group. All of this happens in a world where scale and resilience are critical – serving over a billion API calls every week in only a handful of milliseconds each!

The stack: Java, Kotlin, Spring Boot, PostgreSQL, Cassandra, Kubernetes, Azure, and Kafka

We are responsible for the software throughout the lifecycle; we maintain a DevOps culture, employing continuous integration and delivery, supporting our code through to production and beyond, as well as being firm believers in TDD.

• Designing, building and maintaining high-performing mission-critical systems, making architectural decisions that balance scalability, security, resilience and operational excellence.

• Leading the technical design of complex features and initiatives, ensuring solutions are scalable, resilient, secure, and aligned to our strategy.

• Partnering with product managers and the wider team to shape requirements, influence technical direction and deliver business outcomes.
• Providing technical leadership across teams, leading key initiatives and influencing technical direction.
• Driving engineering excellence through high-quality software development practices.
• Taking ownership of production systems, leading incident resolution and root cause analysis, and driving improvements to enhance reliability, security and performance.
• Sharing knowledge with the wider engineering community.
• Mentoring and supporting engineers and helping raise engineering standards.
• Contributing to recruitment and interview processes. Helping us to attract, assess and develop engineering talent.

• Expert proficiency in at least one major programming language (Java preferred).
• Significant experience designing, building and supporting large-scale distributed systems.
• A collaborative mindset and the ability to work effectively within a cross-functional team.
• Strong understanding of software engineering principles (such as SOLID, design patterns) and how to apply them to create well-structured, maintainable software.
• A DevOps mindset, with good experience of supporting production systems, resolving incidents, and performing root cause analysis.
• Experience leading technical initiatives and influencing engineering decisions across multiple teams.

• Strong understanding of identity and access management concepts, such as OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect (OIDC), would be advantageous.

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. That’s why we commit to providing a fully inclusive and accessible recruitment process. If you need support with your application, click here for more information. And if you're interested in joining our team but don't tick every box, don't let that hold you back from applying. When you join us in this role, you'll be employed by Tesco Stores Limited, the Tesco legal entity responsible for your employment.