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 sit at the centre of the M&S Foods ecosystem and support thousands of internal users and suppliers across 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 distributed systems that are easier to scale, operate and extend.

We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer - Distributed Systems( Foods) to help shape the architecture and technical direction of these platforms. This role works across multiple product teams to solve complex engineering problems, improve system reliability and establish shared technical patterns that enable teams to build safely and efficiently.

What You'll Do

• Shape platform architecture
  Define and evolve architecture for critical systems across the Foods domain, including service boundaries, integration patterns and data models.

• Solve complex engineering problems
  Lead the design of solutions that span multiple teams and distributed systems.

• Modernise legacy platforms
  Help transition existing workflows and integrations towards scalable distributed services and event driven platforms.

• Enable engineering teams
  Provide technical guidance through architecture discussions, design reviews and collaborative problem solving.

• Raise engineering standards
  Champion strong practices in testing, observability, reliability and system design.

What You'll Work On

You will help solve technical challenges such as:

• Simplifying complex legacy integrations across enterprise systems

• Defining clear domain boundaries and service ownership across platforms

• Moving from batch and point to point integrations to API led and event driven architectures

• Designing reliable APIs and event contracts used across multiple teams

• Improving platform observability, resilience and operational visibility

• Enabling teams to build on shared platform capabilities instead of duplicating solutions

Platform Areas

We have a few openings available for the role, depending on team alignment; the role may focus on one of the following domains:

Product Data & New Product Development
Building the core platform that manages product information across the lifecycle from concept through to launch.

Supplier & Commercial Platforms
Modernising systems that support supplier collaboration, risk management and commercial trading decisions across M&S Foods.

These platforms are used by thousands of internal users and suppliers and underpin significant commercial activity. M&S is investing heavily in modernising its technology platforms as part of a broader shift toward a product led and engineering focused organisation.

This role offers the opportunity to shape the architecture of platforms that have significant operational and commercial impact.

Who you are

This role is suited to engineers who enjoy solving complex technical problems and influencing engineering direction across multiple teams.

Experience in the following areas is helpful:

• Designing scalable distributed systems and APIs

• Leading technical design across multiple services or teams

• Simplifying complex legacy systems and integrations

• Working with event driven architectures and messaging systems

• Improving reliability, testing and observability of production systems

• Mentoring engineers and supporting strong engineering practices

• Collaborating closely with product teams and domain experts

Tech Stack

M&S uses a variety of technologies including;

• Java, Spring, SpringBOOT, Micronaut
• React, Next.js, Typescript, Angular
• Azure Cloud, Kubernetes, Dynatrace (observability)
• Event Streaming Platform with Kafka
• Supply chain SaaS tools - Blue Yonder, PIM systems
• Ignite, Redis

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.