Software Development Engineer - Personalisation

Tesco UK; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 70,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

Tesco UK is hiring for a backend engineer in the Personalisation team. You will help power real-time recommendations, offers, and experimentation across web, mobile, and in-store channels, using real-time data, ML, and large-scale distributed systems.

The role involves building low-latency services, integrating ML models and feature stores, and collaborating with data science, product, and analytics teams. Hybrid working model with office and remote days; comfortable with scalable, data-driven

Qualifications

• Proven strong Java backend experience in scalable services.
• Experience building microservices and APIs with REST or gRPC.
• Understanding of event-driven and streaming architectures.

Responsibilities

• Build low-latency, high-throughput personalization services.
• Collaborate with product, data science and analytics teams.
• Operate and improve CI/CD pipelines and deployments.
• Integrate ML models and feature stores into services.
• Work with Kafka, NoSQL and caching layers.

Skills

Java backend

Microservices

Event-driven architectures

Distributed systems

REST/gRPC APIs

Team collaboration

Data-driven personalization

Tools

Kafka

Flink

Beam

Cassandra

DynamoDB

Redis

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Every customer is different, and we're building the technology to make every Tesco experience feel personal. Join Tesco's Personalisation team and help shape the experiences of millions of customers every day by powering real-time recommendations, offers, targeting, and experimentation across our web, mobile, and in-store channels. Our platforms combine real-time data, machine learning, and large-scale distributed systems to turn customer insights into intelligent decisions in milliseconds. You'll work on complex engineering challenges spanning streaming data, low-latency decisioning services, and MLpowered systems, while collaborating closely with product, data science, and analytics teams. This is an opportunity to build technology at significant scale, influence the evolution of our personalisation platform, and directly impact how millions of customers discover, shop, and save with Tesco.

• Building low-latency, high-throughput services for personalisation
• Developing Java / Spring Boot microservices with REST/gRPC APIs
• Working with Kafka and event-driven architectures
• Building pipelines using Apache Flink and Apache Beam
• Integrating ML models and feature stores
• Working with NoSQL databases and Redis caching
• Using Apache Camel for integration where required
• Collaborating with product, data science, and analytics teams
• Writing automated tests and improving reliability
• Monitoring systems using New Relic, Splunk, and metrics platforms
• Supporting CI/CD pipelines and deployments
• Contributing to experimentation (A/B testing

• Strong Java backend experience
• Experience building microservices and APIs
• Understanding of event-driven systems
• Familiarity with stream processing concepts
• Knowledge of distributed systems
• Strong communication and teamwork skills
• Interest in data-driven personalisation systems

Nice to have

• Experience with Apache Flink and Apache Beam
• Experience with Kafka
• Familiarity with Apache Camel
• Experience with NoSQL databases (Cassandra, DynamoDB) and Redis
• Cloud experience (GCP or AWS)
• Docker and Kubernetes
• ML model serving or feature stores
• A/B testing platforms
• Terraform or infrastructure as code
• Performance and scalability optimisation

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.