Head of Software Engineering - Mobile Apps

All the details

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

You'll be joining the leadership for the Mobile Apps Sub-domain within Online, who are responsible for our native Android and iOS mobile applications. Mobile is the most popular way for customers to shop online with M&S, so this group have a pivotal role to play in the future growth of the business and the satisfaction of our customers in the here and now.

The seven squads in this area work on the entire shopping journey from landing on the home page through to completing returns. There is a team focused on optimising the developer experience, and one looking at architectural improvements and tooling.

Our Engineering Managers each have responsibility over 1-2 squads working alongside Product Managers, in blended iOS/Android teams. We lean heavily on automation for our testing and release, and are investing in using AI to accelerate our processes.

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.

Principal Software Engineers, Heads of Product, Heads of Data Science, Senior Technical Programme Managers

• 4 Engineering Managers
• 7 Squads in the strategic Sub-Domain (~40 Engineers growing to ~60)

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 clean code, automation, architecture design, and the adoption of standard frameworks, AI, policies, and North Star principles.
• Own Sub-domain outcomes and health, setting OKRs, ensuring reliability, quality, 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.

Our core mobile technologies include:

• Swift, SwiftUI

• Kotlin, Jetpack Compose, Hilt

• Wiremock, Appium, XCUITest, Espresso

Additionally M&S uses a variety of technologies across the wider business, including:

• React, Next.js, Typescript

• Java, Kotlin, Python, Rust

• GraphQL Federation

• Azure Cloud

• Git Hub, Git Hub Actions, Co-Pilot

• Significant hands‑on experience as a senior software engineer in the mobile space, with exposure (but not necessarily expertise) across web front‑end, back‑end, APIs, cloud infrastructure, and modern development frameworks.
• Leadi…