Head of Software Engineering - Store Operations

Summary

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 are 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 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.

Your key accountabilities will include:

• Lead Software Engineering Managers to build and maintain high quality and reliable software
• Responsible for the Engineering excellence in Store Ops: championing engineering best practices including agile methodologies, Dev Ops, continuous integration and deployment, test automation, and code quality
• Drive modernisation of legacy systems whilst ensuring stability and security across our technology estate
• Line manage and develop Engineering Managers to ensure they have the right skills, development plans and bias to learning.
• Maintain and cultivate effective relationships with Product, Delivery, Architecture and Info Sec counterparts to prioritise, problem solve & maximise value to market.
• Work with the wider Technology function to implement the technical strategy, adopting the North Star principles. You will define and execute the software engineering strategy aligned with our broader business objectives. This includes establishing technical vision, adopting architecture standards, and engineering practices that enable scalability, reliability, and innovation across our digital platforms, e‑commerce and POS systems, supply chain technology, and in‑store solutions.

Your skills and experience will include:

• Previous polyglot hands‑on senior software engineer
• Excellent knowledge in Tech Ops/Dev Ops, Infrastructure, and/or IoT
• 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
• Excellent understanding of System Design, Software Architecture, Cloud and Infrastructure best practices

M&S uses a variety of technologies. For this role that includes:

• Java, Micronaut, PL/SQL
• React
  
  JS, Next.js
• Mule, Kafka, MQ
• Cloud – Azure
• CI/CD – Azure Ops and Git Hub Actions
• Observability:
  Dynatrace

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.

• 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…