Software Engineering Manager - Loyalty

Marks & Spencer Plc; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 80,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading retail company in Greater London is seeking a Software Engineering Manager to lead their engineering team. You will oversee project planning and execution, drive quality standards, and mentor a diverse team. The ideal candidate has extensive software engineering experience and a proven record in team leadership. Join us to redefine the retail experience with technology-driven solutions.

Benefits

20% colleague discount across M&S products

Competitive holiday entitlement

Discretionary bonus schemes

Defined Contribution Pension Scheme

Wide range of training programmes

Wellbeing support including 24/7 Virtual GP

Charity volunteer day

Qualifications

• Previous experience as a senior software engineer in a polyglot environment.
• Proven track record in building and leading high-performance teams.
• Strong understanding of cloud technologies and DevOps practices.

Responsibilities

• Build and manage a high-performing software engineering team.
• Oversee planning and delivery of software projects ensuring alignment with business objectives.
• Drive adoption of software engineering standards and methodologies.
• Establish quality standards for software products.

Skills

Team management

Agile delivery

Technical leadership

Quality assurance

People management

System design

Tools

Java

Kotlin

GraphQL

Azure

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 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 Software Engineering Manager who will provide technical expertise, ship thoughtfully and operate with excellence. Being creative, curious, and confident, you will be an integral part of our empowered, self-managing, multi-disciplinary engineering teams - designing, building, releasing, and maintaining products. Working as an equal partner with the Product and Delivery you will deliver sophisticated and robust solutions to solve daring problems for our customers.

You will play a key role in driving our ambition to create a best-in-class software engineering team, environment, and culture. We are looking for people to join our community of engineers to drive this transformation, build a modern digital ecosystem using exciting technologies and do the best work of their careers.

What’s in it for you

Being a part of M&S is exactly that – playing your part to bring the magic of M&S to our customers every day. We’re an inclusive, dynamic, exciting, and ever evolving business built on doing the right thing and bringing exceptional quality, value, service to every customer, whenever, wherever and however they want to shop with us.

Here are some of the benefits we offer that make working for M&S just that little bit more special…

• After completing your probationary period, you’ll receive 20% colleague discount across all M&S products and many of our third-party brands for you and a member of your household.
• Competitive holiday entitlement with the potential to buy extra holiday days!
• Discretionary bonus schemes awarded based on how you achieve your personal objectives and our performance as a business.
• A generous Defined Contribution Pension Scheme and Life Assurance.
• A dedicated welcome to our teams with a tailored induction and a wide range of training programmes to develop your skills.
• Amazing perks and discounts via our M&S Choices portal to maximise your financial and personal wellbeing.
• Industry-leading parental, adoption and neonatal policies, providing support and flexibility for your family.
• Access to a fantastic range of wellbeing support for all colleagues including access to our 24/7 Virtual GP and PAM Assist to support you and your family.
• A charity volunteer day to support a charity or cause you're passionate about through a dedicated day away from work.

What you'll do

Your key accountabilities will include:

• 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 work closely with 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

Your skills and experience will include:

• 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.

• Strong understanding of testing strategies and reliability engineering

• Excellent people management, interpersonal, analytical, and problem-solving skills

• Ability to lead and line manage senior engineers and technical partners to a desired outcome, without prescribing it.

• Excellent communication skills, both written and spoken and able to adjust for different, including non-technical audiences.

• A servant-leadership mentality that is willing to take ownership of problems.

• Able to influence people at senior levels and from the highly technical to non-technical

Tech stack

The team uses the following core technologies:

• Java / Kotlin

• GraphQL Federation

• Cloud: Azure

• Observability: Dynatrace

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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