Software Engineering Manager - Identity

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

Benefits offered by this job

20% colleague discount on products

Competitive holiday allowance

Discretionary bonus schemes

Pension and life assurance

Induction and training

Exclusive perks via Choices portal

Family policies

Wellbeing support

Volunteer day

Job summary

Marks & Spencer is seeking a Software Engineering Manager to shape the Identity Platform across customer and colleague journeys. You’ll lead polyglot engineers, design scalable architectures, and drive delivery with a focus on reliability and security.

You’ll collaborate with Principal engineers and product partners to align architecture with the commercial roadmap, while nurturing a high-performing, inclusive engineering culture in a hybrid London-based setup.

Qualifications

• Proven experience as a senior software engineer with leadership responsibilities.
• Experience building scalable web/backend systems.

Responsibilities

• Own design and architecture decisions for scalable, distributed services.
• Lead and mentor a high-performing software team.
• Oversee agile delivery, risk management and cross-team collaboration.
• Set technical direction, evaluate new tools, and plan the engineering roadmap.
• Ensure quality, reliability and maintainability of platforms.

Skills

Senior software engineer

Team leadership

Cloud architectures

DevOps mindset

Java / Kotlin

Tools

Java

Kotlin

GraphQL Federation

Micronaut

Azure Cloud

GitHub

New Relic

Dynatrace

Job description

As part of the M&S Software Engineering team, you'll be joining a well-loved historic brand, working on solutions that serve 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 Software Engineering Manager who will provide technical expertise, ship thoughtfully and operate with excellence to build the foundational platform for Identity across all M and S products. The team is responsible for the M&S Identity Platform, managing authentication journeys for both customers and colleagues. We sit at a unique intersection, delivering seamless authentication experiences for customers while enabling internal teams to build on a robust Identity Platform.

Being kind, creative, curious, and confident, you will be an integral part of our empowered, multi-disciplinary engineering teams - building resilient systems. You will be closely working with Principal engineers, product and delivery peers to drive the successful delivery of projects and features.

What You'll Do

The Software Engineering Manager role is the embodiment of 'solving problems through technology' with key responsibilities as follows:

• Software Development & Architecture: Responsible for design and architectural decisions, developing scalable and distributed systems, and driving legacy migrations. Focused on optimizing deployment pipelines to enhance efficiency and reliability.
• Team Management: Build, mentor, and manage a high-performing software engineering team. Foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement within the team. Facilitate communication and collaboration among team members. Ensure budgets, people and resource allocation, and workload, balance across projects.
• Agile Delivery: Oversee the planning, execution, and delivery of software projects, ensuring alignment with business objectives and timelines. Monitor project progress, risks, and dependencies, taking corrective action when necessary. Work closely with product management, design, programme management, and others to define project scope, goals, and deliverables.
• Technical Leadership: Drive the adoption of standards, and methodologies for software development. Provide technical guidance and support to engineering teams for complex projects. Evaluate and recommend new technologies, tools, and platforms to improve the engineering process and software quality. Work with senior engineers to develop the team's technical roadmap and support the product management team to prioritise it against the commercial roadmap.
• Quality Assurance and Maintenance: Establish and enforce quality standards, ensuring software products meet performance, reliability, and usability requirements. Oversee the maintenance and support of existing software systems, ensuring prompt resolution of issues and bugs.

Who You Are

• Previous polyglot hands-on senior software engineer
• Experience working on highly scalable software solutions across web or backend
• Extensive background in software engineering with several years' experience in a variety of systems and technologies
• Experience building and leading teams of highly skilled, senior software engineers that deliver high-quality software.
• Excellent understanding of system design, software architecture, cloud, and software engineering standard methodologies,
• Promoter of DevOps: you build it, you run it.

Tech Stack

M&S uses a variety of technologies including; Java, Kotlin, GraphQL Federation, Micronaut, Azure Cloud, GitHub, New Relic and Dynatrace.

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.

Here are just a few of the benefits that make working here even more rewarding:

• 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.

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