Head of Software Development (Kafka)

Tesco Business Solution and Tesco Technology were established in Budapest in 2019, supporting the Tesco retail business in Central Europe and the Tesco Group. TBST and Tesco Technology are part of our global business services and technology organisations within Tesco.

In the UK, Ireland, India, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic we operate to offer great value to our customers every day.

In Budapest, our Technology hub currently employs near 100 – and a growing number – of highly trained software engineers and managers who are implementing global software development projects across fulfilment, supplier and product management, online and in-store loss prevention, and our online grocery sites.

Our goal is to bring significant changes to the market by using the latest technologies. We are focusing on a large variety of modern technologies from the backend space and frontend to UX, UI and even data science and engineering.

We are aiming to drive business value through innovation and to create an organization that fundamentally transforms the retail environment.

We put accountability and ownership on the individuals and their teams in order to run a horizontal organization where teamwork is extremely important. With an end-to-end approach, we offer our colleagues opportunities for self-development and career growth.

Our colleagues are the key to our success at Tesco. We foster an environment of openness and collaboration. We draw from the diversity, knowledge and experience of our colleagues. It is all about equal opportunities, no matter who you are, or where you come from, you can get on at Tesco.

Our teams consist of individuals who can truly make a difference. Focussing on building a world-class business services centre alongside cutting-edge technology capability, they are working towards our goal of serving our customers and colleagues a little better every day.

We are expanding our operations locally and we are looking for the best talent.

Let’s {code} the together at {Tesco Technology}!

Tesco is a diverse and exciting employer, dedicated to being #aplacetogeton, providing career-defining opportunities to all of our colleagues. If you chose to join our business, we will provide you with:

• Permanent contract from the go – as a sign of our trust in your abilities
• Yearly salary bonus – based on both individual and business performance
• Car allowance
• Extensive private healthcare - complex care package including a wide range of specialists, medical services, and free flu vaccination
• Cafeteria 
• Relocation Help - professional service to secure relevant working permits and other necessary documents
• Learning opportunities - certified technical training and learning platforms like Udemy, Pluralsight, and O'Reilly
• Referral Bonus
• Learning culture and excellent opportunities to develop your career within your chosen field or something altogether new
• Varied and exciting projects to play a part in – there is always something new and exciting in the pipeline

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

#LI-BG1

As Head of Software Development for Kafka Engineering at Tesco Technology, you will have overall engineering accountability for building and supporting a streaming data platform for to support data in motion across our technology platform. Located within our Engineering Effectiveness organisation you and your team will build a scalable, multi-tenant Kafka ecosystem that will consolidate over 30 existing clusters into a strategic streaming platform. Reporting to the Director of Engineering Effectiveness you’ll have line management of 3 Software Development Managers and provide overall leadership of the Effectiveness teams in Budapest – extending your influence into other areas of focus including Observability and engineering productivity. You’ll work closely with your peers in other locations including the UK and India.

What will you do?

• Define and drive the development of our technical strategy for evolving Tesco Technology in close collaboration with Product Management
• Work across Tesco Technology on wider technical initiatives and strategy
• Mentor and grow the capabilities of our engineering community through leading by example, growing and developing your team’s capabilities
• Create the environment for your teams to solve problems with high-quality engineering solutions that scale, perform, and are reliable
• Take accountability for non-functional outcomes within your area including a focus on performance, availability, reliability, and security. Our engineering teams operate with a DevOps mindset and principles and run what they build. This includes in and out-of-hours support
• Continually look for how we can evolve and improve our technology, processes, and practices
• Manage the overall budget for the teams

and relevant experience for this job

• Previous experience working in and across software engineering teams with engineering management responsibilities and experience of managing managers
• Significant experience in building and operating distributed software solutions at scale. Specifically, you have existing expertise with Apache Kafka and the Confluent ecosystem.
•  A high degree of emotional intelligence. You are aware of your own emotions, and how you appear and can self-reflect on your actions. You can empathize with others and modify your behavior and style accordingly
• Problem-solving, analysis, and computational skills. You are comfortable designing systems and reasoning about them. When tackling problems, you take a thorough and logical approach to solving them and you retain ownership through to resolution
• Customer focus. You can find the right balance between outcome delivery and technical excellence. You place the needs of our customers above the needs of you and the team
• Written and verbal communication skills. You can communicate effectively and efficiently taking into account the nature of your audience