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- Tasks: Lead engineering teams to modernise integration platforms and enhance operational excellence.
- Company: Join M&S, a leading UK brand, at the forefront of digital transformation.
- Benefits: Enjoy a 20% discount, competitive salary, bonuses, and generous holiday entitlement.
- Other info: Inclusive culture with excellent career growth and flexible working options.
- Why this job: Make a real impact in a transformative role with cutting-edge technology.
- Qualifications: Experience in enterprise messaging technologies and strong leadership skills required.
The predicted salary is between 70000 - 90000 £ per year.
Why Digital & Tech at M&S?
We're changing the way we do things, and putting industry leading innovation at the heart of how we operate; we need a stellar engineering team to make it happen. You'll be joining one of the most iconic brands in the UK on its most exciting cycle yet. We're more integrated and product led in our tech teams than ever before: learning, changing, and adapting constantly, with millions of people benefiting from your work every single day.
What’s in it for you
- 20% Colleague discount on most things from furniture, fashion and food.
- A first-class welcome to M&S with a tailored induction and a wide range of training schemes to help with your learning and development.
- Attractive annual bonus, based on company performance and personal objectives.
- Competitive holiday entitlement with the potential to buy extra holiday days!
- Amazing perks and discounts via our M&S Choices website.
- Charity Volunteer Day – A paid day away from work to support your chosen charity.
- A very generous Defined Contribution Pension Scheme and Life Assurance.
- Access to a fantastic range of wellbeing support.
- Family friendly policies to support life’s most important landmarks including parental leave.
What makes this role different
This is a leadership role at the heart of M&S's integration transformation. You'll be building and leading an engineering team responsible for the messaging backbone and integration platforms that connect every major system at M&S from warehouse management and food distribution to SAP financials and partner connectivity.
This is a transformative role. We're at the beginning of a multi-year journey to modernise our integration estate and build a cloud-native platform for the future. You won't just be keeping the lights on, you'll be leading the engineering team that builds what comes next, while maintaining the mission-critical flows that process millions of messages daily.
Technology landscape:
Our current integration estate spans IBM technologies (MQ, App Connect Enterprise, DataStage, DB2), MuleSoft, Apigee, MongoDB Atlas, and Azure cloud services. Observability is provided through Dynatrace.
Impact we're looking for
- Define the future state: Shape the target integration platform architecture and the roadmap to get there, working alongside Principal Engineers and Architects.
- Build platform capabilities: Create self-service patterns and golden paths so product teams can integrate without central team bottlenecks.
- Maintain operational excellence: Keep the messaging backbone reliable and predictable, where incidents are rare and quickly resolved.
- Improve reliability: Drive measurable reductions in incident rates, mean time to resolution, and on-call burden.
- Develop your team: Build a high-performing engineering team, driving recruitment, retention, and professional growth.
What you’ll do
Your key accountabilities will include:
- Lead multiple integration engineering teams, owning the technical vision and delivery roadmap.
- Be accountable for reliability targets and operational health across messaging and integration platforms.
- Drive operational excellence: on-call health, incident response, change management, and peak readiness.
- Cultivate single-threaded ownership, your team builds it, they run it.
- Partner with other engineering managers across the integration domain to ensure coherent patterns and shared standards.
- Act as the key technical partner for any vendor delivery, owning outcomes not just outputs.
- Line manage Staff and Senior Engineers, driving recruitment, retention, and professional growth.
- Balance capacity across operational stability, platform modernisation, and technical debt reduction.
Who you are
Your skills and experience will include:
- Previous hands-on experience with enterprise messaging technologies (IBM MQ, Azure Service Bus, or similar).
- Depth in integration middleware: ACE, MuleSoft, Azure Functions, Logic Apps, or equivalent.
- Track record of leading engineering teams through platform modernisation or legacy-to-cloud migrations.
- Strong understanding of reliability engineering: SLOs, error budgets, observability, incident management.
- Ability to balance operational stability with transformation.
- Excellent people management and communication skills.
- A servant-leadership mentality.
- Comfortable operating at both strategic and tactical levels.
Desirable experience
- Experience with IBM technologies (MQ, ACE, DataStage, DB2) and cloud-native alternatives.
- Azure integration services (Service Bus, Functions, Logic Apps, Event Hub).
- Background in retail, logistics, or other high-volume transaction environments.
- Experience with DR/HA patterns, peak planning, and peak-period operations.
- Experience building and leading blended teams across permanent, contract, and vendor resources.
Our Tech Stack
Our current integration estate spans IBM technologies (MQ, App Connect Enterprise, DataStage, DB2), MuleSoft, Apigee, MongoDB Atlas, and Azure cloud services. Observability is provided through Dynatrace. CI/CD is delivered through GitHub Actions and Terraform.
Everyone’s welcome
M&S is ready to push boundaries to lead the retail industry into a greener, speedier, more inspiring digital era. That’s why we’re revolutionising how we work and offering our most exciting opportunities yet. There’s never been a better time to be part of our team. 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’re an in-person business and have core collaboration days in our Support Centre each week. For most teams, this is 3 working days where we come together to collaborate, innovate, and serve our customers thoughtfully.
We are committed to an active Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunities Policy, which starts with our recruitment and selection process, and we are happy to talk flexible working.
If you consider yourself to require reasonable adjustments to any part of our recruitment process, we invite you to share those requirements with us when completing your application. We will make every effort to ensure your needs are met to provide a fair and transparent process of assessment.
Software Engineering Manager - Core Integration employer: Marks & Spencer
Contact Detail:
Marks & Spencer Recruiting Team
StudySmarter Expert Advice 🤫
We think this is how you could land Software Engineering Manager - Core Integration
✨Tip Number 1
Network like a pro! Reach out to current employees at M&S through LinkedIn or other platforms. Ask them about their experiences and any tips they might have for landing a role in the engineering team.
✨Tip Number 2
Prepare for the interview by brushing up on your technical skills and understanding M&S's tech stack. Familiarise yourself with IBM technologies, Azure services, and integration patterns to show you’re ready to hit the ground running.
✨Tip Number 3
Showcase your leadership style! Be ready to discuss how you've built and managed teams in the past. M&S values servant leadership, so highlight your ability to support and develop your team while driving results.
✨Tip Number 4
Don’t forget to apply through our website! It’s the best way to ensure your application gets seen by the right people. Plus, it shows you’re genuinely interested in being part of the M&S family.
We think you need these skills to ace Software Engineering Manager - Core Integration
Some tips for your application 🫡
Tailor Your CV: Make sure your CV reflects the skills and experiences that align with the Software Engineering Manager role. Highlight your leadership experience and any relevant technologies you've worked with, especially those mentioned in the job description.
Craft a Compelling Cover Letter: Use your cover letter to tell us why you're passionate about this role at M&S. Share specific examples of how you've led teams through transformation and how you can contribute to our integration journey.
Showcase Your Technical Skills: Don’t just list your technical skills; demonstrate them! Mention specific projects where you've used enterprise messaging technologies or led platform modernisation efforts. We want to see your hands-on experience!
Apply Through Our Website: We encourage you to apply directly through our website. It’s the best way for us to receive your application and ensures you’re considered for this exciting opportunity to join our team at M&S.
How to prepare for a job interview at Marks & Spencer
✨Know Your Tech Stack
Familiarise yourself with the technologies mentioned in the job description, like IBM MQ, MuleSoft, and Azure services. Be ready to discuss how you've used similar tools in your past roles and how they can be applied to M&S's integration transformation.
✨Showcase Leadership Skills
Prepare examples that highlight your experience in leading engineering teams, especially through platform modernisation or cloud migrations. M&S is looking for someone who can drive recruitment and professional growth, so share your strategies for building high-performing teams.
✨Understand Operational Excellence
Be prepared to discuss your approach to maintaining operational health and reliability in messaging platforms. Talk about your experience with incident management and how you’ve improved system reliability in previous roles.
✨Communicate Effectively
Practice explaining complex technical concepts in simple terms, as you'll need to communicate with both technical and non-technical audiences. Highlight your servant-leadership mentality and how you support your team in achieving their goals.