Job Purpose
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, it’s an exciting time as we’re redefining ourselves into a digital‑first, engineering‑led organisation, with the quality of our engineering team being a key differentiator.
Reports To
Head of Software Engineering
M&S Peers
Heads of Software Engineering, Heads of Product, Senior Technical Programme Managers, Enterprise Architects
What Makes This Role Different
This is a ground‑floor opportunity to shape the future of integration at M&S. You'll define the target architecture, build platform capabilities, and lead the engineering journey from the current state to a modern, cloud‑native estate. You'll need to be equally comfortable discussing messaging patterns, debugging a production incident, and presenting platform strategy to leadership. You will operate across the full spectrum from hands‑on technical contribution to strategic influence.
Impact We’re Looking For
* Define the future state – shape the target integration platform architecture and the roadmap to get there.
* Simplify integration flows – identify and eliminate unnecessary complexity in business‑critical integration paths.
* Build platform capabilities – create patterns, frameworks, and self‑service tooling that enable teams to integrate faster and safer.
* Improve reliability – drive measurable improvements in incident rates and mean time to resolution.
* Strengthen security posture – embed security controls across messaging, API, and data platform.
Key Accountabilities & Responsibilities
* Lead technical excellence from design to operations and launch of core product features or strategic programmes.
* Drive technical direction and influence overall strategy, informing decisions on technology and product investments as well as team setups.
* Champion Communities of Practice to establish engineering excellence at M&S.
* Lead by example via contributions to the engineering ecosystem.
* Pioneer and promote methodologies such as clean code and clean architecture.
* Advocate for engineering productivity, delivery quality and operational excellence through a continuous ecosystem.
* Drive DevOps practices to automate the product development life‑cycle and ownership demeanour.
* Partner with Engineering, Technology and Product leadership to ensure strategic alignment.
* Develop and mentor senior engineering roles across the landscape.
* Promote effective innovation across all engineering.
* Advocate and strategize for continuous industrialisation and product‑minded technical capabilities.
* Inspire ideas to foster purpose and mastery, leading teams toward autonomy and maturity.
* Amplify engineering teams by efficiently unblocking them with direction and establishing alignment.
* Raise the profile of M&S Tech through public content and contribution to open‑source technology.
* Support recruitment, onboarding and internal and external brand outreach activities.
Tech Stack
M&S uses a variety of technologies across its integration estate, spanning IBM technologies (MQ, App Connect Enterprise, DataStage, DB2), Mule, Apigee, MongoDB, and Azure cloud services. You will need to understand the breadth, strengths and constraints of each platform.
Essential Experience
* Significant track record of strategic and innovative thinking, execution and implementation.
* Specialist in clean code and implementation of design patterns for common problems.
* Depth of knowledge in information security – design, quality review and assurance of solutions with embedded security controls.
* Confident driving system design conversations, building systems characterised by high levels of risk, impact, and business or technical complexity.
* Able to analyse current processes, identify and implement optimisation opportunities, and lead a team of specialists to deliver service improvements.
* Experience with a variety of prototyping methods; mentorship of others; end‑to‑end strategic service design.
* Strong ability to influence industry‑based models for developing new technology applications; development of implementation and procurement strategies aligned with business needs.
* Strong understanding of quality assurance, testing quadrants and the testing pyramid, and how to apply them.
* Ability to lead senior engineers and technical customers to a desired outcome without prescribing it.
* Authoritative skills in cloud computing (network, security, serverless, Kubernetes, etc.) and automation.
* Experience implementing observability and reliability using market technologies (e.g., New Relic).
* Good experience with performance engineering (load testing, derivations, tuning, core web vitals, page speed).
* Expertise in reliability testing.
* Able to influence people at senior levels and across technical and non‑technical audiences.
Desirable Experience
* Previous software engineering community leadership experience.
* Professional presentation delivery at internal and external events.
* Ambition to be an open‑source contributor, technology writer or speaker.
* Advocate and experience of continuous integration and continuous delivery.
* Advanced experience of DevOps: build and run.
* Cares about the business and the bigger picture with significant prior examples.
* Excellent communication skills, both written and spoken, and ability to adjust for different audiences.
* A senior leadership mentality willing to take ownership.
* Demonstrable entrepreneurship in previous organisations.
Benefits
* 20% colleague discount on a range of products.
* First‑class welcome with tailored induction and a range of training schemes to support learning and development.
* Attractive annual bonus based on company performance and personal objectives.
* Competitive holiday entitlement with the option to buy extra days.
* Perks and discounts via the M&S Choices website, including GymSave and ShareSave & ShareBuy schemes.
* Charity volunteer day – a paid day to support your chosen charity.
* Defined contribution pension scheme and life assurance.
* Well‑being support including 24/7 virtual GP and PAM Assist, plus additional schemes.
Everyone’s Welcome
M&S is ready to push boundaries to lead the retail industry into a greener, speedier, and more inspiring digital era. Join us to make an immediate impact. We are an in‑person business with core collaboration days at our support centre each week, normally three days per week. We embrace flexible working and are committed to an active inclusion, diversity and equal opportunities policy. If you require reasonable adjustments in the recruitment process, please let us know, and we will make every effort to accommodate you.
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