Head of Software Engineering – Corporate HR in London

Location: London / Hybrid (UK)

Function: Technology – Central Tech (Corporate HR)

Reports to: Senior Head of Software Engineering (Central Tech)

Direct Reports: 4–5 Engineering Managers

As Head of Software Engineering – Corporate HR, you will lead the engineering teams responsible for a broad and integration-heavy HR technology estate that supports the full colleague lifecycle at M&S, from recruitment through to payroll, reward, learning and workforce management.

You will be accountable for the engineering strategy, quality, reliability and operability of a landscape built around key enterprise platforms including Oracle PeopleSoft, SD Worx, Oleeo and Totara, with a large number of supporting specialist systems and third-party services across recruitment, colleague interaction, reward and wellbeing, learning, analytics, payroll and workforce management.

A major part of the role is managing the many integrations and data flows between these platforms and wider M&S systems, including finance, identity, access, reporting and external partners. This is not a single-platform role. It requires strong leadership across a distributed estate with many vendors, interfaces, dependencies and operational hand-offs.

You will lead 4–5 Engineering Managers and partner closely with HR, Product, Technical Programme Management, Architecture, Security and central platform teams to simplify the estate, improve service quality, and ensure critical colleague services work reliably end to end.

What You'll Be Responsible For:

• Set the engineering strategy and technical direction for Corporate HR, aligned to Central Tech and the wider engineering organisation.
• Lead and develop 4–5 Engineering Managers and support strong software engineering and Software Development Engineer in Test teams.
• Oversee the engineering health of the core HR technology estate, including:

• Core Platforms:
• Oracle PeopleSoft for workforce record administration, compensation, learning and core HR processes.
• SD Worx for payroll.
• JDA for workforce management.
• Totara for learning management.
• Oleeo for applicant tracking and recruitment workflows.
• Recruitment Platforms:
• Avature
• Criterion
• TalentBrew
• Invenias
• HireVue
• SAP Fieldglass
• 10xRare
• Colleague Interaction Platforms:
• Oracle HelpDesk / CRM
• Anana
• Reward and Wellbeing Platforms:
• PAM Group
• Gallagher
• Capita
• Legal & General
• Reward Gateway
• Salary Finance
• Equiniti
• Zenith
• Terryberry
• Learning and Development Platforms:
• SAP WPB
• GoodPractice
• Guider
• Document Management, Organisation Modelling, Analytics and Colleague Services:
• OASIS
• OrgVue
• Oracle Business Intelligence
• ETS
• Hallmark PAM

Key Responsibilities:

• Be accountable for the large number of integrations, interfaces and data exchanges across this estate, including flows between HR, payroll, workforce management, identity and access management, finance, reporting and third-party providers.
• Ensure systems and integrations are secure, reliable, observable and supportable, with clear ownership, support models, runbooks and service measures.
• Drive strong engineering practices across architecture, documentation, testing, continuous integration and continuous delivery, production operations, incident management and service ownership.
• Simplify legacy technology, reduce unnecessary complexity and manage technical debt across a multi-vendor environment.
• Shape pragmatic target architectures, including improved application programming interface and event-driven integration patterns where they are the right fit.
• Work closely with stakeholders across HR and Technology to shape roadmaps, prioritise risk, and make technical trade-offs visible.

What We're Looking For:

• Experience leading multiple engineering teams through managers in a complex software environment.
• A strong track record of improving engineering quality, service reliability and delivery performance across business-critical systems.
• Significant experience managing integration-heavy estates with many third-party platforms, suppliers, interfaces and operational dependencies.
• Strong knowledge of application programming interfaces, middleware, event-driven architecture, third-party SaaS platforms, vendor management and production support models.
• Experience working in HR, payroll, workforce management, finance or other corporate platform domains is valuable.
• A leadership style that values clarity, simplicity, ownership and high engineering standards.

Why This Role Matters:

This role is central to keeping critical colleague processes working across recruitment, onboarding, core HR, pay, learning, reward and workforce management. Success depends on more than owning a few core platforms. It depends on managing a large set of interconnected systems well, improving the quality of integrations between them, and reducing risk and complexity across the whole estate.