Software Engineering Manager – Distributed Systems (Foods)

As part of the M&S Software Engineering team, you’ll be joining a well-loved historic brand, working on solutions that serves 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 Software Engineering Manager 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. You will play a key role in driving our ambition to create a best-in-class software engineering team, environment, and culture.

We are modernising the platforms that power how M&S Foods designs products, collaborates with suppliers and manages commercial decisions.

These systems support thousands of internal users and suppliers and sit at the centre of product development, supply chain and commercial operations.

Our focus is evolving a complex landscape of legacy systems and point-to-point integrations into modern API-led and event-driven platforms.

We are looking for a Software Engineering Manager to lead one or more product teams in this space. This role focuses on building high-performing teams, delivering meaningful outcomes and creating the right environment for engineers to succeed.

You will work closely with Staff Engineers, Product Managers and Delivery Leads to ensure teams are aligned, effective and delivering sustainable value.

What You’ll Do

• Build and lead strong engineering teams
  Support engineers’ growth through coaching, feedback and clear development plans. Create an environment where people can do their best work.

• Own delivery and outcomes
  Work with Product and Delivery to define realistic plans and ensure teams deliver high-quality outcomes at a sustainable pace.

• Create the right team environment
  Remove blockers, clarify priorities and establish effective ways of working across teams.

• Partner on technical direction
  Work closely with Staff and Principal Engineers to ensure architectural direction is understood and achievable.

• Drive engineering excellence
  Support strong practices across testing, CI/CD, observability and system reliability.

• Improve how teams work
  Use data and feedback to continuously improve delivery, processes and team health.

• Collaborate with stakeholders
  Build strong relationships with business and product stakeholders, ensuring alignment and clarity on priorities and outcomes.

Platform Areas

Depending on team alignment, the role may focus on one of the following domains.

• Product Data & New Product Development

Leading teams building the core platform that manages product information from concept through to launch.

The focus is on simplifying fragmented legacy systems and enabling a reliable, event-driven product data platform that integrates across supply chain, packaging and commercial systems.

• Price & Promotion Execution

Leading teams responsible for how prices and promotions are executed across M&S Foods.

This includes modernising workflows that are currently dependent on legacy systems and manual processes, moving towards automated, event-driven platforms that improve accuracy, speed and visibility.

• Partner & Franchise Integration Platform

Leading teams that build and operate the integration platform connecting M&S Foods with UK franchise and international partners.

This platform enables the exchange of critical data such as product master data, pricing, promotions and sales between M&S systems and partner ecosystems, supporting both wholesale and retail operating models.

The focus is on evolving a mix of legacy integrations into scalable, API-led and event-driven integration services, improving data consistency, reliability and near real-time visibility across partner systems.

AI and Engineering Productivity

We are exploring ways to improve team productivity and platform capabilities using modern AI tooling and automation, including:

• AI-assisted engineering workflows

• improved operational insights through intelligent monitoring

• experimentation with AI-enabled developer tools

What We’re Looking For

This role is suited to people who enjoy building strong teams and delivering complex systems in a collaborative environment.

Experience in the following areas is helpful:

• Leading and developing engineering teams

• Delivering software in a product-led environment

• Working with distributed systems and modern architectures

• Managing delivery across multiple stakeholders and priorities

• Supporting strong engineering practices and team health

• Partnering with technical leaders to deliver scalable systems

• There are many ways to build the skills needed for this role. If your experience aligns with most of these areas, we encourage you to apply.

Technology

Our platforms are built using modern cloud-based services and event-driven architectures.

Technologies used across the domain include:

• Java, Angular, React

• REST APIs and event-driven services

• Kafka and messaging platforms

• MySQL, MongoDB databases, Postgres

• SaaS products

• Microsoft Azure cloud platform

• Docker and Kubernetes

• CI/CD with GitHub Actions

• Observability with Dynatrace

• Microsoft Copilot

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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