As part of the M&S Software Engineering team, you’ll be joining a trusted and iconic brand at an exciting stage of its digital transformation. You’ll help build and evolve solutions that serve millions of customers and thousands of colleagues, working within empowered, multidisciplinary engineering teams across a modern digital ecosystem.
We’re looking for a passionate Staff Software Engineer who combines deep technical expertise with strong leadership and mentoring skills. You’ll play a pivotal role in solving complex technical challenges, shaping architectural decisions, guiding engineering best practices and helping to build a world-class engineering culture. This is an excellent opportunity for someone who thrives in a collaborative environment, enjoys influencing technical strategy and is passionate about delivering scalable, reliable software solutions using modern cloud-native technologies.
Due to high interest, this role may close earlier than advertised. We recommend applying as soon as possible.
What you'll doYour key accountabilities will include:- Leading the design, development and delivery of complex software solutions, distributed systems and large-scale platform enhancements.
- Driving technical excellence through architecture leadership, code reviews, engineering standards and continuous improvement initiatives.
- Mentoring and coaching engineers at all levels, supporting capability growth and helping develop future engineering leaders.
- Collaborating closely with Product, Delivery and Engineering teams to solve complex business challenges and deliver customer-focused outcomes.
- Owning operational stability by promoting a production-first mindset, improving observability, maintaining service reliability and advancing engineering roadmaps.
Who you areYour skills and experience will include:
- Strong software engineering experience across multiple layers of the technology stack, including back-end systems, cloud platforms and modern engineering practices.
- Deep understanding of software development principles, including Test Driven Development (TDD), Behaviour Driven Development (BDD), code quality and non-functional testing.
- Experience operating within DevOps environments, with a strong focus on CI/CD, automation, scalability and system reliability.
- Proven technical leadership experience, including architecture design, technical decision-making, mentoring and coaching engineering teams.
- Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence technical direction and work effectively across diverse teams.
- Java
- Kafka
- GraphQL
- Azure Cloud
- Kubernetes
- GitHub Actions
- New Relic / Dynatrace
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.
As an in-person business, most of our teams have core collaboration days in our Support Centres each week. Typically, this involves spending three days together to collaborate, innovate and deliver the best outcomes for our customers and colleagues.
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-DB2
Skills Required
- Strong experience across front-end and back-end technologies
- Expert understanding of software development practices
- Solid expertise with distributed version control systems like Git
- Proficiency with Test Driven Development, Behaviour Driven Development and non-functional testing
- Strong DevOps experience (build it, run it) and CI/CD advocacy
- Experience with cloud engineering and building highly scalable applications
- Experience with Kubernetes, Azure Cloud, and observability tooling
- Ability to document software design decisions and produce system/operations documentation
- Leadership, coaching, and mentoring skills; participation in hiring and onboarding
- Knowledge of Domain Driven Design
- Ambition to contribute to open-source, write technology content, or speak publicly
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.
