Marks and Spencer
Senior Software Engineer - Food (Distributed Systems)
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Senior Software Engineer
**M&S Foods Product Team |
As part of the Marks & Spencer (M&S) Software Engineering team, you’ll join a beloved historic brand, working on solutions that serve millions of loyal customers and thousands of colleagues. Rooted in ethical values and led by technologists who deeply respect the discipline of software engineering, M&S is transitioning into a digital-first, engineering-led organisation. Your role will be pivotal in shaping this transformation—where the quality of our engineering teams is our defining competitive edge.
About The Role
The M&S Foods Product team is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to thrive in our dynamic, self-managing domain engineering team. You’ll push the boundaries of food data ingestion, modelling, and distribution—critical infrastructure that supports supplier systems, pricing, promotions, product lifecycle management, and supply-chain operations.
The team oversees a platform vital to both internal teams (e.g., commerce, supply chain) and third-party partners, ensuring they access high-quality, timely data while enabling scalable innovation. As part of this best-in-class engineering community, you’ll collaborate to build a modern digital ecosystem, leverage cutting-edge technologies, and deliver groundbreaking work.
What You’ll Do
- Build and evolve reliable data services: Design and develop scalable, high-performance data pipelines and APIs in Java and Micronaut, integrating with event-streaming platforms like Kafka. Ensure downstream systems and stakeholders receive accurate, timely information.
- Take ownership of features end-to-end: From design → development → testing → deployment → production monitoring, balance speed and long-term maintainability to sustain the platform’s robustness.
- Shape the technical direction of the Food Platform: Contribute to architecture decisions, promoting clean data contracts, well-defined schemas, and event-driven models. Optimise for data quality, integration reliability, and developer usability while evaluating cost-performance trade-offs at scale.
- Champion engineering excellence: Write clean, maintainable, well-tested code and foster best practices via code reviews, pair programming, and collaborative documentation. Drive a culture of continuous improvement.
- Drive operational excellence and observability: Collaborate on platform reliability, using tools like Dynatrace to design monitoring and alerting, and participate in on-call rotations to uphold data accuracy and availability.
- Collaborate widely: Partner with Product Managers, cross-functional engineering teams, and Supply Chain/Commercial teams to solve complex business challenges innovatively. Bridge silos and shorten time-to-value through transparent decision-making.
- Mentor and support colleagues: Coach junior engineers, share knowledge, and grow a culture of inclusivity within our engineering community..
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Who You Are
- Data-intense distributed systems expertise: 5+ years designing and scaling services handling high-volume data (millions+ of records/transactions). Proficient in event-drive/batch processing and resilient system architecture.
- JVM languages depth: Skilful in Java (preferably with Micronaut), with a commitment to clean, maintainable code.
- DevOps and CI/CD proficiency: Experience designing CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitHub Actions), automating deployments, and using Infrastructure as Code (Terraform). Boosts in developer productivity and release management are a plus.
- Cloud and data platform agility: Familiarity with Azure cloud environments, Kafka (event streaming), SFTP (batch ingestion), Mongodb(NoSQL) databases, and SaaS integrations (e.g., ERP/supply-chain solutions). Bonus for Docker/Kubernetes and Terraform experience.
- Data modelling and integration expertise: Knowledge of Domain-Driven Design (DDD), schema evolution, and data integrity. Ability to integrate with third-party systems without excessive customisation.
- Strategic pragmatism: Weigh long-term architecture against immediate business needs, prioritise cost-performance scales, and thrive in high-autonomy environments.
- Security and quality advocacy: Use tools like Snyk/Semgrep for vulnerability scanning and coding standards enforcement. Dedicated to secure coding practices and compliance.
- AI-augmented development curiosity: Explore AI tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Claude) to enhance productivity while preserving code quality.
- Full-stack awareness: While specialising in backend/data engineering, familiarity with React/Angular facilitates cross-team collaboration.
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What’s in it for You
Joining M&S means contributing to a dynamic, inclusive, values-driven business. Here’s why it’s exceptional:
- 20% colleague discount on M&S products (fashion, tech, food).
- Tailored induction + learning schemes to grow your skillset.
- Competitive annual bonus tied to company and individual goals.
- Generous holiday allowance (expandable via extra days).
- M&S Choices: Discounts on GymSave, health perks, shareholder schemes.
- Charity Volunteer Day (paid leave for charity work).
- Generous DC pension scheme + life assurance.
- Comprehensive wellbeing support: 24/7 Virtual GP, mental/physical health initiatives.
Note: Bonuses, holiday entitlements, and roles vary by location/grade.
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