Principal software engineer- store payments & infrastructure

Principal Engineer – Store Payments & Infrastructure

The Principal Engineer is the most senior engineer in the company and plays a crucial role in delivering our business goals. They are a technical leader responsible for setting technical direction, driving engineering excellence, and aligning technology with business strategy. This role combines deep technical expertise with strong leadership, mentorship, and cross-functional influence to deliver robust, scalable solutions and foster a high-performing engineering culture.

This role is aligned with Store Payments and Infrastructure in Retail Domain and will partner closely with the Head of Engineering and the Solution Architect in the Store P&I sub-domain. Being creative, curious, and confident, you will be an integral part of our empowered, self-managing, multi-disciplinary Engineering and Platform teams – designing, building, releasing, and maintaining solutions. Platform/DevOps background (Azure and Linux) would align best; however, it is your passion for designing and delivering the best tech solutions to our customers and colleagues in stores that counts the most.

What You'll Do

• Lead system design and solution architecture across multiple teams and domains.
• Own and drive the technical strategy and roadmap for the area of responsibility.
• Make and communicate architectural decisions, ensuring alignment with business goals.
• Define and uphold technical standards, quality, and best practices.
• Mentor and coach engineering managers, staff, and key engineers to develop technical and leadership skills.
• Provide actionable feedback and foster continuous improvement across teams.
• Uphold high hiring standards and contribute to talent development.
• Act as a bridge between business and engineering, ensuring objectives are aligned.
• Influence product and business strategy by articulating technical trade-offs.
• Represent engineering in strategic discussions, planning, and external forums.
• Ensure quality, reliability, and security are embedded in all engineering processes.
• Lead incident response and provide expert support for critical issues.
• Identify and address productivity bottlenecks; drive tooling improvements.

Who You Are

• Extensive experience in system design, architecture, and technical leadership across complex domains.
• Proven ability to set and deliver technical strategy and roadmaps.
• Strong mentoring and coaching skills.
• Experience aligning technology with business objectives and influencing strategy, ideally at the enterprise level or in large organisations.
• Deep understanding of engineering best practices, quality, and operational excellence.

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.