Head of Software Engineering

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 passionate Head of Software Engineering who will provide superb leadership, management and technical expertise thoughtfully, operating with excellence to build the systems and services for M and S financial business all while making the product experience seamless for our users and customers. 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’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.

The Product: We have a genuine ambition to become engineering first, building and operating an elite digital platform. We are looking for people to join our community of engineers to support this transformation, build a modern digital ecosystem.

Scope: You will manage the technical teams that build and support the post-purchase experience for customers. This includes customer service journeys across multiple channels (web, chat, voice, and beyond), and the tools and platforms that our colleagues use to support them. We see customer service as a strategic pillar, it ensures that we’re always getting closer to our customers’ needs.

What you’ll do: The Head of Software Engineering role is the embodiment of ‘solving problems through technology’ with key responsibilities as follows:

• Lead Software Engineering Managers to build and maintain high quality and reliable software.
• Responsible for the engineering excellence of their Product Group e.g., behaviours, operations, and technical quality.
• Line manage and develop Software Engineering Managers to ensure they have the right skills, development plans and bias to learning.
• Maintain and cultivate effective relationships with Product and Delivery teams to prioritise, problem solve & maximise value to market.
• Work with the wider Technology function to implement the technical strategy, adopting the North Star principles.
• Lead the development and improvements to M&S standard frameworks and policies, ensuring that they are understood and adopted.
• Write strategy papers and contribute to designing architecture to drive tech transformation and implementations.
• Coach, support and guide Engineering managers and engineers to produce clean, quality code through code reviews and pair programming.
• Drive DevOps practices to automate the Product development life cycle.
• Foster a culture of experimentation and innovation to drive solutions.
• Ensure products meet their SLI and SLO targets and are fully supported by teams both in and out of hours.
• Lead development of Product Group OKRs and Product health, and demonstrate responsibility for the entire Product Group's objectives.
• Drive the improvement and measurement of Product Group quality and reliability via software engineering standard methodologies and metrics.
• Orchestrate continuous learning and improvement initiatives for the Product(s) and Product Group(s).
• Solve problems collaboratively, communicating decisions to senior stakeholders.
• Lead product planning and roadmap with an agile mind-set focusing on supporting our colleagues.
• Engage with product colleagues to improve value for the customer and to understand ambiguous requirements.
• Demonstrate and champion pragmatism in terms of commercial delivery and software quality.
• Promote technology, innovation, values, and ways of working within the team and wider community.
• Active contribution and leading of Communities of Practice.
• Lead recruitment and new starter on-boarding activities.
• Own and deliver initiatives to take M&S Technology to the next level by challenging the status quo.
• Enhance and implement M&S Engineering talent strategy.
• Foster self-management and accountability at the team level through servant leadership.
• Support recruitment and brand outreach activities.

Who you are: Excellent understanding of system design, software architecture, cloud, and software engineering standard methodologies. Proven track record implementing and managing platform and system integrations. Experience establishing a strong operational culture with a focus on data-driven improvements. Previous experience as either a hands-on senior software engineer or solution architect. Excellent knowledge in all stack areas, from front-end through to back-end. Consistent track record in delivering, operating, leading, hiring and shifting at Product Group level and above. Strong understanding of testing strategies and reliability engineering. Highly organised and able to handle multiple workstreams, lead senior internal customers and their expectations. Excellent people management, interpersonal, analytical, and problem-solving skills. Ability to lead and line manage senior engineers, engineering managers 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.

Desirable experience: Experience with customer support platforms like Genesys, Google CCAI, Zendesk, Twilio. Leading product areas with 5+ teams. Previous software engineering community leadership experience. Presentation delivery at internal and external events. An ambition to be an open-source contributor, technology writer or speaker. Advanced experience with cloud engineering. Cares about the business and the bigger picture with significant prior examples. A senior leadership mentality that is willing to take responsibility. Demonstrable entrepreneurship in previous organisation(s).

M&S is ready to push boundaries to lead the industry into a greener, speedier, more inspiring digital era. That’s why we’re revolutionising how we work. Marks & Spencer aims to be an inclusive organisation, trusted and admired by our colleagues, customers and suppliers. Join us and make an immediate impact. We are committed to an active Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunities Policy, which starts with our recruitment and selection process. We are happy to talk flexible working and ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process. 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.