Head of Software Engineering - Personalisation

Job Description

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’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, Data Science and Delivery teams you will deliver sophisticated and robust solutions to solve daring problems for our customers and colleagues.

You will join the leadership for the Personalisation product group, responsible for our on‑site and in‑app personalisation, search and recommendations capabilities. Teams in this area work on innovative features such as 1:1 Personalised Search and AI Stylist. They are highly cross‑functional, blending engineering, data science, product, design and delivery. You’ll help deliver the vision of 1:1 personalisation across our estate.

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.

Team

2‑8 Engineering Managers (each responsible for 5‑9 engineers).

4‑8 squads in a strategic product group (50‑75 engineers).

What you will be doing

The Head of Software Engineering role is the embodiment of “solving problems through technology” with key responsibilities as follows:

• Lead, develop and inspire Engineering Managers and teams, fostering a strong learning culture, high‑quality engineering standards, and clear development and talent strategies.
• Partner closely with Product, Delivery and Technology leadership to shape strategy, prioritise roadmaps, solve complex problems and maximise value to colleagues and customers.
• Drive technical excellence and modern engineering practices, including DevOps, clean code, automation, architecture design and the adoption of standard frameworks, policies and North Star principles.
• Own product‑group outcomes and health, setting OKRs, ensuring reliability, quality, SLI/SLO performance and full operational support across products.
• Champion innovation, continuous improvement and agile ways of working, encouraging experimentation, pragmatism and commercially sound delivery.
• Build and scale high‑performing teams and communities, leading recruitment, onboarding, coaching, communities of practice and contributing to wider engineering brand and culture.

Tech stack

• React, Next.js, Typescript
• Java
• Kotlin
• Python
• Swift
• GraphQL Federation
• Cloud: Azure
• While M&S is principally a Java environment, the Personalisation group has a mix of Python and Java teams.

What you will need to have

• Significant hands‑on experience as a polyglot senior software engineer, with strong expertise across front‑end, back‑end, APIs, cloud infrastructure and modern development frameworks.
• Leading large product areas with 5+ teams.
• Knowledge of personalisation, recommendation and search concepts and their relation to e‑commerce, ideally an awareness of the current state‑of‑the‑art.
• Proven ability to design and evolve complex systems with deep knowledge of software architecture, system design, cloud‑native patterns and engineering standard methodologies.
• Strong experience delivering, operating and scaling software at product‑group level and above, including building, leading and hiring senior engineering teams.
• Advanced DevOps, testing and reliability engineering expertise, embracing CI/CD, automation, observability and a “you build it, you run it” ownership model.
• Experience working closely with Product and Data Science teams, translating ambiguous requirements into robust technical solutions within customer‑centric environments.
• Technically credible people leader and servant leader, able to line manage and influence senior engineers and engineering managers, drive technical outcomes and communicate effectively with both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.

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.

• 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. 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.

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