Technical Programme Manager (Recommendations - Online)

About the Online Technology Programme Team

The Online teams have led the way in creating systems which are driving the transformation of the Tesco technology platform: We have significantly grown the number of customers who rely on us to deliver their shopping to their home or convenient location. We saw substantial increases in volumes and customers through the pandemic which tested and proved the scalability of the platform. These increases saw use regularly exceed over 1.3m orders a week though the retail platform.

This is an opportunity to work in the Recommendations team, where the products not only deliver significant revenue and insight to the business but also heavily influence how customers engage with Tesco across online and in-store.

The Recommendations domain drives over £40m a week in Online grocery sales and has found success by being extremely data-driven and experiment-led. The services are high-scale, low-latency, and allow for the definition and tuning of algorithmic parameters; all of this enables us to serve our customers as effectively and efficiently as possible.

In the role, you will collaborate with the Tesco business across multiple channels as we seek to build on our existing personalisation engine and expand the reach of our new Media APIs. Strong communication skills will be critical as you work closely with product, engineering, and data science to deliver pivotal, new capabilities that enable us to recommend products that delight our customers via new mediums and drive forward our “I love my Tesco Clubcard” strategic pillar.

Technical Programme Managers (TPMs) deliver complex, cross-functional technology programmes that support colleagues and help serve our customers better. They work collaboratively, influence Product, Engineering and business colleagues and lead the programme to deliver value quickly and often.

Whilst specific responsibilities will be dependent upon the changing needs of the Tesco business, the following provides an overview of the role’s key responsibilities and measures:

• Deliver programmes with business and/or technical risks
• Optimise or use a standard programme delivery methodology for delivering programme goals (e.g. agile, waterfall, iterative)
• Bring together, coordinate and energise virtual technology teams to deliver programme goals
• Create and track a plan to deliver the programme goals, including the technical implementation plan
• Understand trade-offs and resulting impacts; make impacts visible to Product, Infrastructure or Engineering for the right decision to be made
• Managing dependencies, delivery timelines and implementations plans, using my knowledge of technical architecture
• Appreciating and responding to delivery challenges, using my knowledge of engineering best practices and/or infrastructure implementations
• Understand technology concepts, grasp new ones quickly and appreciate their implications on delivery
• Effectively manage major incidents, ensuring stakeholders are updated with the right information to drive the correct decisions
• Build positive relationships with suppliers & external stakeholders to deliver software or professional services
• Coach peers and other roles, teaching where required, on methodologies and programme management tools
• This role will best suit an individual who enjoys working as part of a team, is well organised, pragmatic and a lateral thinker with an inquisitive mind who is motivated to make change for the better and, most importantly, puts our customers first.

Key Skills and Experience

You’ll need to have:

• Experience delivering technology or infrastructure projects
• Experience of building credible relationships and influencing management and leadership teams
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills – you must be able to articulate complex concepts to a diverse audience.
• The ability to influence without authority.

Personal:

• Flexibility, ability to plan and organise, responsiveness, creativity, self-starter 
• Demonstrate resilience during change and continue delivery

We offer excellent benefits that help make Tesco a great place to work!  These include but are not limited to:

• Annual bonus scheme
• Holiday starting at 25 days plus a personal day (and bank holidays)
• Great colleague discounts and deals, saving you money on everyday purchases, utility bills for the home and more
• Retirement savings plan – save between 4% and 7.5% and Tesco will match your contribution
• Buy as you earn and Save as you earn share schemes
• Opportunities to get on – take advantage of our ongoing learning opportunities and award-winning training to help you achieve the career you want

About Tesco

Our vision here at Tesco is to become every customer's favourite way to shop, whether they are at home, out shopping, on the move, anywhere in the world. We want our customers to be inspired and whatever they are looking for, we’re finding bigger and better ways to provide it.

Everything is underpinned by our continuous drive for the best tools and technology to deliver our vision. We’re driving innovation and transforming our Technology to become the world’s leading retailer. We need people who share our ambition to deliver for our customers; passionate and confident people willing to take the initiative and drive us forwards. In return we offer excitement, a great team, an excellent benefit package, and significant career development opportunities.

Joining us means playing a part in defining; building and launching an ambitious roadmap of digital products that could affect the lives of millions of people over the years to come.

If that sounds exciting, then we'd love to hear from you.

The position will be based in the UK with occasional travel to other Tesco sites i.e. Central Europe and India offices.