Software Engineering Manager - Commercial Trading; O9

Summary

Join M&S Software Engineering and help shape the digital future of one of the UK’s most trusted brands. You’ll work on products and platforms that support millions of customers and thousands of colleagues, as part of an organisation investing heavily in becoming digital-first and engineering-led.

We’re looking for a Software Engineering Manager who combines strong technical judgement with a passion for building high-performing teams. This role sits within Fashion Home and Beauty, in our Commercial Planning sub domain. The successful candidate will initially work within a large programme, providing Engineering oversight, and partnering with the Vendor and implementation team to deliver optimal technical solutions.

This is an opportunity to help shape a best-in-class engineering culture, environment, and team. If you’re excited by modern technology, large-scale impact, and the chance to influence how engineering is done at M&S, this is a place where you can do some of the best work of your career.

• Ensuring the operational stability and resilience of the software solutions owned by your team
• Delivering high-quality software solutions that create measurable value for the business
• Fostering a culture of innovation and continuous improvement, and establishing strong engineering standards
• Ensuring cross-functional requirements such as security, performance, and reliability are built into delivery
• Holding our Vendors and partners to account for all aspects of good software delivery
• Challenging solution architecture, and helping drive the right approach for any given business requirement

As a Software Engineering Manager, you’ll combine people leadership, technical direction, and delivery excellence to help teams solve problems through technology at scale.

• Team leadership: Build, mentor, and manage a high-performing software engineering team. Foster a culture of collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement within the team. Facilitate communication and collaboration among team members. Ensure budgets, people and resource allocation, and workload, balance across projects.
• Delivery excellence: Oversee the planning, execution, and delivery of software initiatives, ensuring alignment with business goals, timelines, and customer outcomes. Manage risks and dependencies proactively, and work closely with Product, Design, and Delivery partners to define scope and priorities.
• Technical leadership: Drive the adoption of strong engineering practices, standards, and methodologies. Provide guidance on complex technical challenges, shape the team’s technical roadmap with senior engineers, and help balance technical investment with product and commercial priorities.
• Quality and reliability: Establish high quality standards so software meets performance, reliability, and usability expectations. Support the ongoing maintenance and improvement of existing systems, ensuring issues are resolved quickly and effectively.

The teams use a variety of technologies, including:

• Java, Spring, Spring BOOT, Micronaut
• React, Next.js, Typescript, Angular
• Azure Cloud, Kubernetes, Dynatrace (observability)
• SQL Server, MongoDB
• Ignite, Redis

• Previous polyglot hands-on senior software engineer
• Experience working on highly scalable software solutions across web or backend
• Extensive background in software engineering with several years’ experience in a variety of systems and technologies
• Experience building and leading teams of highly skilled, senior software engineers that deliver high-quality software.
• Excellent understanding of system design, software architecture, cloud, and software engineering standard methodologies,
• Promoter of Dev Ops: you build it, you run it.
• Strong understanding of testing strategies and reliability engineering
• Excellent people management, interpersonal, analytical, and problem-solving skills
• Ability to lead and line manage senior engineers and technical partners to a desired outcome, without prescribing it.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and spoken and able to adjust for different, including non-technical audiences.
• A servant-leadership mentality that…