Overview

About us

As a Software Development Manager, you’ll be leading an agile team of software development engineers developing Tesco’s next generation of instore customer facing applications running on the tills of today and the future. You will be responsible for the future engineering direction for the products that we build, solving problems, encouraging your team and developing new features through quality, scalable, performant and maintainable technical solutions. The solutions that you and your team will be responsible for will have a global reach, impacting Tesco Store and Head Office Colleagues from UK and other international countries Tesco operates in.

You’ll be a passionate, pragmatic Software Development Manager with an inquisitive mind who builds and motivates their team to make change for the better and most importantly put our colleagues first. Comfortable with modern engineering practices and open source development tooling and technologies, you’ll use innovation to improve the colleague experience and efficiency of your engineering team.

We build modern frontend applications using:

·       Node.js, Express

·       React, Redux, GraphQL, Styled Components

·       Jest, React Testing Library, Enzyme, Cypress

·       Docker, Microsoft Azure

We take responsibility for the software through its entire lifecycle. We practice continuous integration and delivery and support our code through to production and beyond. We work cross-functionally with Product, UX, UI Design, Analytics, API teams and more.

The Role

As a Software Development Manager your primary responsibility is to build and maintain a passionate, engaged and effective engineering team. You do this through taking a deep interest in the people that report to you by making sure they are happy, motivated and challenged in what they are doing. You devolve decision-making and provide the team with the psychological safety to move fast. You guide them to reach pragmatic technical solutions and keep yourself close to the code without becoming a blocker. You take ownership when things go wrong, but celebrate success collectively. In short, you act as a multiplier of your team’s effectiveness.

Specifically, you will:

·       Foster the careers of the engineers reporting into you by finding opportunity for growth, coaching, addressing concerns and if necessary, implementing performance management.

·       Grow the capability of Tesco Technology as a whole by becoming involved in our engineering hiring and being passionate about building high performing and diverse teams.

·       Work closely with Product Management to identify and minimise risk within an outcome and help prioritise and evolve a workable technical solution ready for delivery.

·       Represent your team within wider technical discussions across different stakeholder groups, and be effective in doing so by constantly broadening your understanding of our technology landscape.

·       Take ownership for the delivery of specific outcomes, or work across wider groups in conjunction with programme management to deliver more significant outcomes. Drive us to constantly improve quality.

·       Take ownership of non-functional outcomes, including focus on performance, availability, reliability and security.

·       Continually look for how we can evolve and improve our technology, processes and practices.

·       Adopt best practices in software engineering: design, testing, version control, documentation, build, deployment, monitoring and operations. Build flexible systems choosing simple, straightforward solutions over more complex ones

·       Drive innovation and continuous improvement in technology and methodologies to continuously increase productivity and ensure that technology standards and best practices are maintained across each area of focus

·       Drive the planning and allocation for the development of the defined technology roadmap and develop, implement and maintain a disaster recovery plan

·       Take a data driven approach to engineering where all initiatives have metrics to help drive progress and determine success

·       Monitor security of a dedicated area and continue to upgrade it; monitor application performance and review any application failures

·       Manage and lead the team in challenging and pushing the boundaries of innovation and technology

·       Anticipate and react to major technology changes to ensure the maintenance of company leadership in the competitive landscape, ensuring that Tesco is regarded as a leader and innovator in its field

·       Establish technical standards and ensure adherence to them for product development and company operations

·       Identify and evaluate new technology platforms that would help the Tesco achieve its objectives

·       Ensure customer experience is 24/7 at optimum levels due to relentless tuning and performance improvement in the production platforms

·       Participate in the development of the long-term development and business technology strategies including participation in decisions involving in-house vs. outsource and nearshore vs. far shore providers as well as build vs. partner vs. buy decisions on new products/functionality

Experience relevant for this job:

·       Experience leading agile engineering teams of 6+ engineers and architecting complex responsive web applications

·       5+ years of hands-on commercial software development experience in Technologies like React, Node, Javascript.

·       Depth of professional software engineering experience and best practices for the full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, and operations

·       Awareness of current technology standards, industry trends, emerging technologies, and software development best practices

·       Strong background in distributed systems working at scale

·       Ability to handle multiple and competing priorities within a fast-paced environment

·       Understanding of working in a matrix organization and owning all operational metrics and support

Personal

·       Great at hiring and developing talent as well as experience managing teams of developers, ideally across multi-location sites

·       Proven leadership skills and team development capabilities

·       High propensity to problem solving

·       Strong hands-on nature and ability to roll up sleeves to produce product, evaluate tools,

·       Collaborative and self-motivated in approach

·       Ability to influence and persuade others with excellent communication skills and analytical ability

·       Methodical, organised and action oriented in approach with a proven resiliency to cope with high pressure situations (e.g. release cycles)

What’s in it for you

  • We offer excellent benefits that help make Tesco a great place to work. These include but aren’t limited to:Annual bonus scheme where you can earn up to 3.5% of base salary
  • Holiday starting at 25 days plus a personal day (plus 8 Bank holidays)
  • On-site state of the art gym at our Welwyn Campus with discounted “Gympass” membership & free health checks via Nuffield Health
  • Retirement savings plan – save between 4% and 7.5% and Tesco will match your contribution
  • Life Assurance – 5 x contractual pay
  • Share Schemes – Join our ‘Buy As You Earn’ & ‘Save As You Earn’ share schemes after 3 months service
  • Colleague Clubcard (including a 2nd card for a family member) after 3 months service
  • Colleague Discounts:
  • 10% increasing to 15% after every pay day for a four day period, off most purchases at Tesco (from April 2020)
  • 10% off One Stop
  • 10% off pay monthly & SIM only deals with Tesco Mobile
  • 20% off all F&F purchases
  • 20% off car, pet and home insurance at Tesco bank. T&C’s apply
  • 25% off Tesco Café
  • 50% off complete glasses purchases & free eye tests (other offers available) at Vision Express
  • 50% off health checks at Tesco Pharmacy
  • An exclusive deals and discounts website saving you money on everyday purchases, treats for the family, eating out and utility bills for the home
  • Cycle to work scheme
  • Shuttle Bus Service to/from Hatfield & Welwyn Garden City Station to Welwyn Campus & Hatfield Offices
  • Opportunities to get on – take advantage of our ongoing learning opportunities and award-winning training, to help you achieve the job and career you want
  • Our Employee Assistance Programme helps you deal with life’s challenges
  • Financial wellness – Tesco has partnered with experts to help you make the most of your money
  • Get involved in a range of fundraising activities with our long-term charity partners

About us

  • We are building systems to solve real world problems at scale, impacting tens of millions of people
  • Teams of great Engineers (and Managers and Product Managers) to learn from
  • We are agile and enlightened in our approach to building software and teams
  • There’s a great atmosphere and we work sustainably as a team
  • Tesco has a “do the right thing” mentality
  • We promote flexible working

We are proud to have an inclusive culture at Tesco where everyone is welcome and truly feels able to be themselves. At Tesco, we not only celebrate diversity, but recognise the value and opportunity it brings to enable us to serve our shoppers a little better every day. We strive to create a workforce that reflects our customers not only here in the UK, but worldwide. Our aim is to attract and welcome a diverse range applicants from all walks of life, offering many varying working patterns across our business, and we would love to hear from you!