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M&S
Head of Software Engineering
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This role has expired
M&S
Head of Software Engineering
London
Hybrid
Description
Hybrid requirements: 3 days per week in the office.
As part of the M&S Software Engineering team, you’ll be joining a well-loved historic brand, working on solutions that serves 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 technical expertise, ship thoughtfully and operate with excellence. Being creative, curious, and confident, you will be an integral part of our empowered, self-managing, multi- disciplinary engineering teams - designing, building, releasing, and maintaining products. Working as an equal partner with the Product and Delivery teams you will deliver sophisticated and robust solutions to solve daring problems for our customers and colleagues.
You will play a key role in driving our ambition to create a best-in-class software engineering team, environment, and culture. We are looking for people to join our community of engineers to drive this transformation, build a modern digital ecosystem using exciting technologies and do the best work of their careers.
Reports to Senior Head of Software Engineering
M&S peers - Principal Engineers, Head of Product, Senior Technical Programme Managers
Team
5-8 Engineering Managers (Engineering Managers are responsible for 5-9 Engineers each).
6-8 Squads in a strategic Product Group (50-75 Engineers)
Key Accountabilities & Responsibilities
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 andpolicies, 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 & 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
Tech stack
M&S uses a variety of technologies including:
React, Next.js, Typescript
Java
Kotlin
Swift
GraphQL Federation
Cloud: Azure
Observability: New Relic
Essential Experience
Previous polyglot hands-on senior software engineer
Excellent knowledge in all stack areas, from front-end through to back-end
Extensive background in software engineering with several years’ experience in a variety of systems and technologies
Consistent track record in delivering, operating, leading, hiring and shifting at Product Group level and above.
Experience building and leading teams of highly skilled, senior software engineers that deliver high-quality software.
Excellent understanding of system design, software architecture, cloud, and software engineering standard methodologies,
Promoter of DevOps: you build it, you run it.
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
Leading large product areas with 5+ teams
Knowledge of Software approaches like Domain Driven Design
Previous software engineering community leadership experience
Presentation delivery at internal and external event.
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)
Works closely with
You’ll be working closely with Senior Heads of Software Engineering, Head of Product, Commercial and Finance, CTOs, Software Engineering Managers, Principal Engineers, Software Engineers, other Heads of Software Engineering, UI/UX Engineers, Architects and Product Managers to collaboratively tackle problems! There will be day-to-day interactions with Technical Program Managers, who you’ll work with to constantly evolve your team’s ways of working.
As a member of M&S Software Engineering, you’ll also work with and learn from other engineers and specialists in the organisation through Business Platforms, Product Portfolios, Product Groups, other teams and Communities of Practice. 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 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 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.
We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process. If you consider yourself to have a disability or learning difficulty which means you are unable to complete the application process online, please get in touch either by phone on 0345 300 3725 or by email recruitment.online@marksandspencer.com so we can make alternative arrangements for you.
M&S
Head of Software Engineering
London
This role has expired