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- Tasks: Build and maintain the Loyalty platform, ensuring secure and scalable customer interactions.
- Company: Join M&S, a historic brand transforming into a digital-first organisation.
- Benefits: Enjoy a 20% discount, competitive holidays, and tailored development support.
- Other info: Be part of a diverse team committed to innovation and excellence.
- Why this job: Make a real impact on millions of customers while advancing your engineering career.
- Qualifications: Experience in distributed systems and familiarity with JVM languages or backend frameworks.
The predicted salary is between 60000 - 75000 £ per year.
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.
As a Senior Software Engineer, your expertise will help us on this journey - creating customer facing capabilities that are robust, scalable, observable, and grounded in best in class engineering practice. The M&S Loyalty team is looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our dynamic, high impact engineering group. You will provide technical expertise, ship thoughtful solutions, and operate with excellence. Creative, curious, and fearless, you will be an integral part of our empowered, self managing engineering team, pushing the boundaries of our Sparks loyalty experiences and underpinning systems.
Our team owns the Loyalty Platform - services that underpin the customer journeys and functional capabilities used across the Sparks ecosystem. We enable product teams to ship faster, safer, and with higher quality by providing a worldclass customer and developer experience foundation. In this role, you will help us drive our ambition to build a best in class software engineering team, culture, and environment. Join our community of engineers to build a modern digital ecosystem, improve the experience for millions of customers, and do the best work of your career.
What You'll Do
- Build, evolve, and maintain Loyalty platform services, ensuring they enable secure, scalable, and high-performance interactions for customers across Sparks journeys.
- Take end-to-end ownership of features - from design and development through testing, deployment, documentation, and production monitoring.
- Contribute to the technical direction of the Loyalty team, shaping solutions that balance user experience, scalability, maintainability, and operational excellence.
- Write clean, maintainable, well tested code and champion engineering best practices across the organisation.
- Work closely with engineers across multiple domains to understand needs, reduce friction, and improve customer and developer experience.
- Participate in our support rota and take shared responsibility for the reliability, observability, and operational health of Loyalty services.
- Contribute to code reviews, pair programming, tech discussions, working groups, and documentation to share knowledge and continually raise engineering standards.
- Influence and advocate for foundational engineering improvements, modernisation initiatives, and enhancements across the Sparks ecosystem.
- Mentor engineers at different levels through coaching, pairing, and structured feedback.
Who You Are
- Experienced in building and scaling distributed systems.
- Familiar with JVM based languages or backend service frameworks (Micronaut is a plus but not essential).
- Hands‑on experience with DevOps, CI/CD, automated testing, and operating what you build.
- Familiarity with modern event driven technologies, particularly Kafka.
- Experienced in cloud environments (preferably Azure) and container platforms such as Kubernetes.
- Strong understanding of modern backend development, platform adjacent standards, and scalable architectural patterns.
- Pragmatic, collaborative, and comfortable working in a high autonomy team with strong engineering culture.
- Passionate about enabling other engineers and improving engineering experience at scale.
Tech Stack
- Java, node.js
- JUnit, Mockito, testcontainers
- Micronaut, GraphQL, gRPC
- Azure Cloud, Kubernetes
- GitHub Actions, Dynatrace
- Snyk, Semgrep, Wiz
- Java, Spring, Micronaut
- SQL Server, MongoDB
- Redis, Ignite
What's In It For You
- 20% colleague discount on all M&S products and many third party brands.
- Competitive holiday allowance with the option to buy more.
- Discretionary performance based bonus schemes.
- Strong pension and life assurance.
- Tailored induction and continuous development support.
- Exclusive perks and savings through our M&S Choices portal.
- Market leading, family friendly policies (parental, adoption, neonatal leave).
- 24/7 wellbeing support including virtual GP and mental health services.
- One paid volunteer day per year.
We are ambitious about the future of retail - disrupting, innovating, and leading our industry into a more conscientious, inspiring digital era. We're transforming how we work together and offering our most exciting opportunities yet. 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 support or reasonable adjustments during any stage of the recruitment process, please let us know when completing your application so we can ensure you are set up for success.
Senior Software Engineer - Loyalty employer: M&S
Contact Detail:
M&S Recruiting Team
StudySmarter Expert Advice 🤫
We think this is how you could land Senior Software Engineer - Loyalty
✨Tip Number 1
Network like a pro! Reach out to current or former employees at M&S through LinkedIn. A friendly chat can give you insider info and maybe even a referral, which can really boost your chances.
✨Tip Number 2
Show off your skills in action! If you have a GitHub or personal project that showcases your coding prowess, make sure to highlight it during interviews. It’s a great way to demonstrate your hands-on experience with the tech stack they use.
✨Tip Number 3
Prepare for those technical interviews! Brush up on your knowledge of distributed systems and cloud environments. Practising coding challenges can help you feel more confident and ready to tackle any questions they throw your way.
✨Tip Number 4
Don’t forget to express your passion for engineering culture! M&S values collaboration and improvement, so share examples of how you've mentored others or contributed to team success in your previous roles.
We think you need these skills to ace Senior Software Engineer - Loyalty
Some tips for your application 🫡
Tailor Your Application: Make sure to customise your CV and cover letter to highlight your experience with distributed systems and JVM-based languages. We want to see how your skills align with the role of Senior Software Engineer in our Loyalty team!
Showcase Your Technical Skills: Don’t forget to mention your hands-on experience with DevOps, CI/CD, and cloud environments like Azure. We’re looking for someone who can hit the ground running, so let us know how you’ve used these technologies in your past projects.
Demonstrate Your Collaborative Spirit: We value teamwork and collaboration, so share examples of how you've worked with others to improve engineering standards or mentor fellow engineers. This will show us that you’re a great fit for our empowered, self-managing team.
Apply Through Our Website: We encourage you to apply directly through our website. It’s the best way to ensure your application gets the attention it deserves. Plus, you’ll find all the details about the role and our amazing company culture there!
How to prepare for a job interview at M&S
✨Know Your Tech Stack
Familiarise yourself with the technologies mentioned in the job description, like Java, Micronaut, and Azure. Be ready to discuss your experience with these tools and how you've used them in past projects. This shows you're not just a fit on paper but also have practical knowledge.
✨Showcase Your Problem-Solving Skills
Prepare to discuss specific challenges you've faced in previous roles, especially related to building and scaling distributed systems. Use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) to structure your answers, highlighting your thought process and the impact of your solutions.
✨Emphasise Collaboration
Since the role involves working closely with other engineers, be ready to share examples of how you've collaborated in teams. Talk about your experiences with code reviews, pair programming, or mentoring others, as this aligns with their emphasis on a strong engineering culture.
✨Ask Insightful Questions
Prepare thoughtful questions that show your interest in the company’s goals and the Loyalty team’s projects. Inquire about their current challenges, future tech initiatives, or how they measure success in their engineering practices. This demonstrates your enthusiasm and strategic thinking.