Principal Software Development Engineer

Tesco Bengaluru; Bengaluru; On-site; INR 3,000,000 - 6,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Tesco Bengaluru is seeking a Principal Software Development Engineer to shape large parts of Tesco’s technical landscape and define strategic direction. You will own design, implementation, and delivery of software across portfolios, guiding teams to deliver high-quality solutions.

As a senior technical authority, you will influence architecture, drive cross-team initiatives, and ensure security, scalability, and reusability.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience designing and running large engineering landscapes.
• Proven track record as a technical authority across multiple domains.
• Ability to influence architecture and drive large programmes.
• Hands-on with design and coding to resolve hard problems.

Responsibilities

• Define technical strategy and drive implementation across product portfolios.
• Lead multi-team initiatives and guide inner source platform adoption.
• Influence roadmaps, manage critical refactoring, and build scalable architectures.

Skills

Hands-on coding

System design

Technical authority

Influencing skills

Job description

About the role

As a Principal Software Development Engineer, you are key in shaping large parts of Tesco’s technical landscape. You contribute to strategic planning, combining business vision and industry best practices to define technical strategy and make decisions. You typically work across multiple teams, setting standards for engineering excellence and efficient technical design. You are hands-on and guide teams to improve technology across product portfolios, infrastructure, and processes. As a senior technical expert, you are a thought leader for large and complex areas. You set technical direction to translate strategy into action, making a significant impact to the organisation. You own the design, implementation, and delivery of software that shapes products and technologies. You use your depth of skill and experience to enable multiple teams around you to deliver excellent software quickly.

You will be responsible for

My impact is across the directorate that I am a member of, but also reaches beyond to effect change across the wider organisation. I solve problems and deliver solutions that impact the whole engineering organisation. I would generally expect to be given a very high-level problem to work on, but everything after that is me: identifying and formalising the problem, converting it into a simple technical solution, leading its implementation, and training the rest of the organisation to use it.

As a senior technical authority, I deliver value that materially changes outcomes for the company, and my job is not just about my technical judgement but also my ability to influence others to deliver results. I am an authority on multiple technologies and in multiple domains; senior engineers from other teams come to me for advice on the architecture of their products. I am a proponent of an effective engineering community that encourages learning for all.

I guide large complex programmes of work, working with and influencing the engineering, product, programme, and business teams. In doing so I influence build vs buy decisions, deprecate legacy software, and lead significant refactoring. I make the right trade-offs to influence the roadmap and sequencing of work to deliver early and often. I am hands on with design and coding to resolve hard problems that have a long-term impact.

I guide one or more areas and define the strategic design keeping security, scalability, extensibility, and reusability in mind. I drive Tesco’s Inner Source Platform, maintaining and contributing to projects whilst influencing direction and adoption. I have strong communication and influencing skills to resolve disputes and to lead stakeholders to appropriate decisions with data points and foresight. I have sufficient breadth and depth of technical knowledge to influence senior leaders on engineering strategy. I build strategy documents, designs and code which are exemplary and serve as a model for others. I write critical path code, having a good appreciation of the whole stack. I innovate and stay ahead of industry trends, competition, and new paradigms and share appropriately. I routinely come up with PoCs to evaluate approaches or technology choices to enable or accelerate programmes.

You will need

Key people and teams I work with in and outside of Tesco: Product ManagersEngineersTechnical Programme ManagersMembers from wider engineering community

People, budgets and other resources I am accountable for in my job: No direct line management responsibility

Operational skills relevant for this job: ProgrammingSystem Design Development PractiseInfrastructureSoftware SecurityOperations and MaintenanceCore TechnologyDevelopment LifecycleProduct MethodologiesRetail Technology AwarenessCommunication & InfluencingData Analytics & InsightsStrategic Thinking & Problem SolvingFinance & ProcurementCuriosity & LearningEmbracing and Enabling Change

Experience relevant for this job: Successfully had across large engineering organisations.Demonstrated experience designing, developing and running whole system landscapes.Experience acting as a technical authority across multiple domains and multiple technologiesExperience proposing architectural patterns for adoption by an organisation.Experience guiding large programmes of work.Experience driving the adoption of inner sourcing initiatives.

Whats in it for you?

At Tesco, we are committed to providing the best for you.

As a result, our colleagues enjoy a unique, differentiated, market-competitive reward package, based on the current industry practices, for all the work they put into serving our customers, communities and planet a little better every day.

Our Tesco Rewards framework consists of pillars - Fixed Pay, Incentives, and Benefits.

Total Rewards offered at Tesco is determined by four principles - simple, fair, competitive, and sustainable.

• Salary - Your fixed pay is the guaranteed pay as per your contract of employment.


• Annual Bonus - Opportunity to earn additional bonus, distributed as 2/3rd in compensation and 1/3rd in shares.


• Leave & Time-off - Colleagues are entitled to 30 days of leave (18 days of Earned Leave, 12 days of Casual/Sick Leave) and 10 national and festival holidays, as per the company’s policy.


• Making Retirement Tension-FreeSalary - In addition to Statutory retirement beneets, Tesco enables colleagues to participate in voluntary programmes like NPS and VPF.


• Health is Wealth - Tesco promotes programmes that support a culture of health and wellness including insurance for colleagues and their family. Our medical insurance provides coverage for dependents including parents or in-laws.


• Mental Wellbeing - We offer mental health support through self-help tools, community groups, ally networks, face-to-face counselling, and more for both colleagues and dependents.


• Financial Wellbeing - Through our financial literacy partner, we offer one-to-one financial coaching at discounted rates, as well as salary advances on earned wages upon request.


• Save As You Earn (SAYE) - Our SAYE programme allows colleagues to transition from being employees to Tesco shareholders through a structured 3-year savings plan.


• Physical Wellbeing - Our green campus promotes physical wellbeing with facilities that include a cricket pitch, football field, badminton and volleyball courts, along with indoor games, encouraging a healthier lifestyle.

About Us

Tesco in Bengaluru is a multi-disciplinary team serving our customers, communities, and planet a little better every day across markets. Our goal is to create a sustainable competitive advantage for Tesco by standardising processes, delivering cost savings, enabling agility through technological solutions, and empowering our colleagues to do even more for our customers. With cross-functional expertise, a wide network of teams, and strong governance, we reduce complexity, thereby offering high‑quality services for our customers.

Tesco in Bengaluru, established in 2004 to enable standardisation and build centralised capabilities and competencies, makes the experience better for our millions of customers worldwide and simpler for over 3,30,000 colleagues

Tesco Technology

Today, our Technology team consists of over 5,000 experts spread across the UK, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and India. In India, our Technology division includes teams dedicated to Engineering, Product, Programme, Service Desk and Operations, Systems Engineering, Security & Capability, Data Science, and other roles.

At Tesco, our retail platform comprises a wide array of capabilities, value propositions, and products, essential for crafting exceptional retail experiences for our customers and colleagues across all channels and markets. This platform encompasses all aspects of our operations - from identifying and authenticating customers, managing products, pricing, promoting, enabling customers to discover products, facilitating payment, and ensuring delivery. By developing a comprehensive Retail Platform, we ensure that as customer touchpoints and devices evolve, we can consistently deliver seamless experiences. This adaptability allows us to respond flexibly without the need to overhaul our technology, thanks to the creation of capabilities we have built.