Senior Head of Software Engineering - Customer Domain

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Summary

As a Senior Head of Engineering at M&S, you'll be joining a well-loved historic brand that's transforming into a digital-first, engineering-led organisation. You'll be setting the vision and strategic priorities for solutions that serve millions of loyal customers and thousands of colleagues, with engineering excellence as a key differentiator in our transformation journey.

As a senior leader, you'll develop and lead engineering teams in creating high-quality digital experiences that position M&S as a leading retailer. Working as an equal partner with Product, Platform and Delivery teams, you'll deliver sophisticated and robust solutions while collaborating with our 3rd party technology partners to ensure consistent development standards across all teams.

As both a leader and deliverer, you'll need to combine visionary leadership with hands-on problem-solving capabilities. You'll be a best practice advocate, championing our customers and colleagues while building on core technology and team-building skills to influence others across the organisation and consistently deliver the highest possible quality.

You should be an exceptional engineering leader capable of driving strategic direction and technical excellence across M&S's Product Portfolios. You'll shape and implement long-term technical vision while leading large-scale engineering teams, establishing robust frameworks and standards for high-quality software delivery.

What You’ll Do

Your key accountabilities will include:

• Accountable for delivery of strategic vision, direction, OKRs and priorities of the software engineering discipline to meet the needs of internal and external customers and colleagues
• Own the long-term technical strategy of software engineering in Product Portfolios, including technology selection alongside Architecture, building, support, and updates aligned with M&S business objectives
• Own and deliver initiatives to advance M&S Software Engineering by challenging status quo
• Lead Product Portfolios of senior engineers and engineering managers to build and maintain high quality and reliable software (leading very large teams, sometimes numbering in the hundreds)
• Lead development of strategic vision and roadmaps for Engineering within a Tribe and represent these roadmaps through cross-Tribe alignment sessions to ensure we are identifying dependencies early and working to an aligned strategy across D&T
• Design, develop and deliver frameworks governing technology standards and design principles for all customer and colleague-facing M&S products
• Evaluate and recommend new technologies, tools and platforms to improve engineering process and software quality
• Build and maintain high-performing teams through hiring, training, mentoring, talent management and performance management
• Make appropriate decisions on partner versus internal capability use to maintain efficient team size
• Monitor progress and take corrective action when required

Who You Are

A strong track record of people leadership skills, with experience of leading and managing teams of people demonstrating strong communication skills, coaching and development of others. Passionate about our customers and colleagues, with an ability to lead for the M&S behaviours and organisational culture.

• Ability to demonstrate strong coding ability in modern programming languages
• Demonstrable ability to discuss and reason about modern and legacy languages and frameworks
• Broad knowledge of current and emerging technologies
• Extensive experience with Scrum Agile Software Delivery framework, including Continuous Integration, Delivery, and Deployment
• Excellent knowledge of modern working practices, including security, delivery procedures, and governance
• Commercially aware with ability to balance customer solutions with business needs
• Experience in user-centred software delivery, working with researchers, designers, and users directly
• Proven track record leading large teams in varying locations with a mixed ratio of permanent/temporary employees and contractors in high-profile, high-volume software systems.
• Strong experience of setting development strategy at a senior level.
• Ability to influence people at senior levels across technical and non-technical domains.

What’s In It For You

Working at M&S means being part of something bigger - helping to deliver quality, value and service to millions of customers every day. We’re inclusive, fast-moving and always evolving, with a strong sense of purpose and a focus on doing the right thing.

Here are just a few of the benefits that make working here even more rewarding:

• 20% colleague discount on all M&S products and many third-party brands for you and someone in your household, available once you’ve completed your probation
• Competitive holiday allowance with the option to buy more
• Discretionary bonus schemes linked to your performance and ours
• Strong pension and life assurance to help plan for the future
• Tailored induction and training to support your development from day one
• Exclusive perks and savings through our M&S Choices portal
• Market-leading family policies, including parental, adoption and neonatal leave
• 24/7 wellbeing support, including virtual GP access and mental health services
• One paid volunteer day a year to support a cause that matters to you

Everyone’s Welcome

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.

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