Software Development Manager - Identity

The engineers in our Identity build the APIs that securely identify customers across all touchpoints with Tesco around the globe: online, over the phone, and in-store with Clubcards. You’ll focus on making our experiences as streamlined for customers as possible, by exploring ground breaking authentication factors like biometrics and using ML technologies to dynamically assess the risk of each individual customer session. Your work will be at the heart of all new propositions across the Tesco Group, like our new Clubcard Plus subscription service. All of this happens in a world where scale and resilience are critical – serving over a billion API calls every week in only a handful of milliseconds each!

The stack: Java, Kotlin, Cassandra, MySQL, Oracle, Azure, AWS, Apache Spark, and Kafka

We are responsible for the software throughout the lifecycle; we maintain a DevOps culture, employing continuous integration and delivery, supporting our code through to production and beyond, as well as being firm believers in TDD.

As a Software Development Manager, your primary responsibility is to build and maintain a passionate, engaged, and effective development team of engineers. You'll do this by taking a deep interest in the people that report to you, making sure they are happy, motivated, and challenged in what they are doing, guiding them to reach pragmatic technical solutions, and keep yourself close to the code (without becoming a blocker). You'll also take ownership when things go wrong but celebrate success collectively and, in short, act as a multiplier of your team’s effectiveness. Specifically, you will:

• Foster the careers of the engineers reporting into you by finding opportunities 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 successful 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 Identity within wider technical discussions across different business groups, constantly broadening your understanding of our technology landscape so as to increase the effectiveness of your contribution.
• 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 of Tesco Connect features, including performance, availability, reliability, and security.
• Continually look for means to evolve and improve our technology, processes, and practices.

The role will include ownership of the on-call rota to support our applications in production.

Experience relevant for this job:

• Experience with management of software engineering teams of 5+ people in size.
• Good knowledge of Java and the associated ecosystem.
• Experience of using agile methodologies.
• Hands-on experience of building and supporting reliable, operationally robust, and distributed Java applications/products.

Skills relevant for the job

• A high degree of emotional intelligence: you are aware of your own emotions, how you appear and can self-reflect on your actions. You can empathise with others and modify your behaviour and style accordingly.
• Problem-solving, analysis, and computational skills: you are comfortable designing systems and reasoning about them. When tackling problems, you take a detailed and logical approach to solving them and retaining 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.
• Any previous experience of having led a globally distributed software engineering team would be a huge plus.

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

Our vision at Tesco is to become every customer’s favourite way to shop, whether they are at home or out on the move.  Our core purpose is “Serving our customers, communities and planet a little better every day”.  Serving means more than a transactional relationship with our customers.  It means acting as a responsible and sustainable business for all stakeholders, for the communities we are part of, and for the planet.

We are proud to have an inclusive culture at Tesco where everyone truly feels able to be themselves.  At Tesco, we not only celebrate diversity, but recognise the value and opportunity it brings.  We’re committed to creating a workplace where differences are valued, and make sure that all colleagues are given the same opportunities.  We’re a big business with diverse working patterns and many business areas which means that we can find something that works for you.  Everyone is welcome at Tesco.

We have recently announced that we are moving to a more blended working week – combining office and remote working.  Our offices continue to be where we connect, collaborate and innovate.  Talk to us about how this can work for you.

Note: Should you be successful in your application, your employment will be subject to and conditional upon you providing your bank account details on your agreed start date.