Principal Software Development Engineer - Retail Platform

As a Principal SDE in the Retail Platform team, I drive one or more initiatives to completion and act as the sounding board and wherever necessary, do the critical design and coding myself to lead by example. I know how to separate domains and be able to tease them apart. I can learn on the job and understand the nuances of the Retail business and the right way to solve them using technology.

As a Principal Software Development Engineer, you are key in shaping large parts of Tesco’s technical landscape. You contribute to strategic planning, combining business vision and industry best practices to define technical strategy and make decisions. You typically work across multiple teams, setting standards for engineering excellence and efficient technical design. You are hands-on and guide teams to improve technology across product portfolios, infrastructure, and processes. As a senior technical expert, you are a thought leader for large and complex areas. You set technical direction to translate strategy into action, making a significant impact to the organisation. You own the design, implementation, and delivery of software that shapes products and technologies. You use your depth of skill and experience to enable multiple teams around you to deliver excellent software quickly.

My impact also reaches beyond the team across the whole of Tesco and I solve problems and deliver solutions that impact the whole engineering organisation. I would generally expect to be given a very high-level problem to work on, but everything after that is me: identifying and formalising the problem, converting it into a simple technical solution, leading its implementation, and training the rest of the organisation to use it.

As a senior technical authority, I deliver value that materially changes outcomes for the company, and my job is not just about my technical judgement but also my ability to influence others to deliver results. I am an authority on multiple technologies and in multiple domains; senior engineers from other teams come to me for advice on the architecture of their products. I am a proponent of an effective engineering community that encourages learning for all.

I guide large complex programmes of work, working with and influencing the engineering, product, programme, and business teams. In doing so I influence build vs buy decisions, deprecate legacy software, and lead significant refactoring. I make the right trade-offs to influence the roadmap and sequencing of work to deliver early and often. I am hands-on with design and coding to resolve hard problems that have a long-term impact.

I guide one or more areas and define the strategic design keeping security, scalability, extensibility, and reusability in mind. I drive Tesco’s Inner Source Platform, maintaining and contributing to projects whilst influencing direction and adoption. I have strong communication and influencing skills to resolve disputes and to lead stakeholders to appropriate decisions with data points and foresight. I have sufficient breadth and depth of technical knowledge to influence senior leaders on engineering strategy. I build strategy documents, designs and code which are exemplary and serve as a model for others. I write critical path code, having a good appreciation of the whole stack. I innovate and stay ahead of industry trends, competition, and new paradigms and share appropriately. I routinely come up with PoCs to evaluate approaches or technology choices to enable or accelerate programmes.

Skills relevant to the job

Programming

System Design

Development Practice

Infrastructure

Software Security

Operations and Maintenance

Core Technology Development

Lifecycle Product Methodologies

Retail Technology Awareness

Communication & Influencing

Data Analytics & Insights

Strategic Thinking & Problem Solving

Finance & Procurement

Curiosity & Learning

Embracing and Enabling Change

Experience relevant to the job

Successfully had across large engineering organisations.

Demonstrated experience designing, developing and running whole system landscapes.

Experience acting as a technical authority across multiple domains and multiple technologies.

Experience proposing architectural patterns for adoption by an organisation.

Experience guiding large programmes of work.

Experience driving the adoption of inner sourcing initiatives.

We offer excellent benefits that help make Tesco a great place to work. These include but aren’t limited to:

• Annual bonus scheme of up to 45% of base salary
• Car allowance of £7,320 per annum
• Holiday starting at 25 days plus a personal day (plus 8 Bank holidays)
• Retirement savings plan - save between 6% and 10% 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
• Health screening every 2 years
• Private medical insurance offered by Bupa
• Cycle to work scheme
• 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

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.