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 strong ethical values and a clear ambition to become a digital-first, engineering-led organisation, this is an exciting time to join us.
Our Loyalty (Sparks) team is looking for a Senior Software Engineer to help build and evolve the platform that underpins customer journeys across the Sparks ecosystem. You’ll work in a high-impact, empowered engineering team, delivering scalable, reliable, and high-performing services, while shaping the technical direction and improving developer and customer experiences.
This role is ideal for a collaborative, pragmatic engineer who thrives in modern distributed systems and is passionate about engineering excellence, innovation, and continuous improvement.
What you’ll do
- Build, evolve, and maintain scalable Loyalty platform services supporting Sparks customer journeys
- Take end-to-end ownership of features from design through to deployment, monitoring, and optimisation
- Contribute to technical direction, balancing scalability, performance, and maintainability
- Collaborate across teams to improve developer experience and reduce friction in delivery
- Support live services through shared ownership of reliability, observability, and operational excellence
Who you are
- Experience building and scaling distributed systems in modern backend environments
- Strong knowledge of JVM-based languages or backend frameworks (e.g. Java, Micronaut, Spring)
- Hands-on experience with CI/CD, DevOps practices, and operating production systems
- Familiarity with event-driven architectures and technologies such as Kafka
- Experience working with cloud platforms (preferably Azure) and containerisation (Kubernetes)
Tech Stack
- Languages & Frameworks: Java, Node.js, Spring, Micronaut, GraphQL, gRPC
- Testing: JUnit, Mockito, Testcontainers
- Cloud & Infrastructure: Azure, Kubernetes
- Data & Messaging: SQL Server, MongoDB, Redis, Ignite, Kafka
- DevOps & Tooling: GitHub Actions, Dynatrace
- Security & Quality: Snyk, Semgrep, Wiz
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.
#LI-Hybrid #LI-KB1
Skills Required
- Experience building and scaling distributed systems
- Strong knowledge of JVM-based languages or backend frameworks (e.g. Java, Micronaut, Spring)
- Hands-on experience with CI/CD and DevOps practices
- Experience operating production systems with observability and reliability
- Familiarity with event-driven architectures and Kafka
- Experience with containerisation (Kubernetes)
- Experience working with cloud platforms (preferably Azure)
- Familiarity with testing frameworks and tools (JUnit, Mockito, Testcontainers)
What We Do
At M&S, we're dedicated to being the most trusted retailer, prioritising quality and delivering value. Every day, we bring the magic of M&S to our customers, whenever, wherever and however they want to shop with us. For over a century, we've set the standard, doing the right thing and embracing innovation. Today, with over 65,000 colleagues serving 32 million customers globally, we're putting quality products at the heart of everything we do. Tomorrow holds boundless opportunities with us. We're pioneering digital innovation and shaping the future of retail where our values drive every action. We stay close to customers and colleagues, always curious and connected. Our decisions are bold, our actions ambitious. Transparency is paramount, with straightforward, honest communication. We're constantly innovating, always striving for the best. Our focus is on aiming higher and winning together, combined with wise financial decisions to secure our future. Join us at M&S to shape the future of retail.
