Software Development Manager - Mango

What’s in it for you

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 the role

Tesco’s xAPI (Experience API) powers Tesco’s online shopping, enabling customers to discover and shop online from diverse client applications & devices i.e. web, mobile-apps, tills in-store, scan-as-you-shop, tablets, voice assistants etc. We, the xAPI team, build products that provide the experience APIs (GraphQL) for building client applications and handle all the device traffic to support the user experience for the end-user’s shopping lifecycle from product discovery to purchase to returns and refunds, shopping history. We build, develop and maintain massive scale, highly performant REST/GraphQL API services, backend-for-frontend services that enable ease of client application development and our success is the difference between millions of happy customers or millions of missed opportunities.

You’ll be a passionate, pragmatic Software Development Manager with an inquisitive mind who builds and motivates their team to make change for the better and most meaningfully put our colleagues first. Comfortable with modern engineering practices and open-source development tooling and technologies, you’ll use innovation to improve the colleague experience and efficiency of your engineering team.

We build modern frontend applications using:

• Javascript, Typescript, Node.js, Express
• React, GraphQL, Redis, Varnish
• Jest, React Testing Library, Enzyme, Cypress
• Docker, Kubernetes, Microsoft Azure, Apigee, Akamai

We take ownership for the software through its entire lifecycle. We practice continuous integration and delivery and support our code through to production and beyond. We work multi-functionally with Product, UI Design, Analytics, API teams and more.

You will be responsible for

Your primary responsibility is to build a passionate, engaged and effective engineering team. You do this through taking a deep interest in the people that report to you by making sure they are happy, motivated and challenged in what they are doing. You devolve decision-making and provide the team with the psychological safety to adapt quickly. You guide them to reach pragmatic technical solutions and keep yourself close to the code without becoming a blocker. You take ownership when things go wrong, but celebrate success collectively. In short, you act as a multiplier of your team’s effectiveness.

Specifically, you will:

• Develop the careers of the engineers reporting into you by finding opportunity for growth, coaching, addressing concerns and if vital, 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.
• Take ownership of 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, including focus on performance, availability, reliability and security.
• Continually look for how we can evolve and improve our technology, processes and practices.
• Embrace standard methodologies in software engineering: design, testing, version control, documentation, build, deployment, monitoring and operations. Build flexible systems choosing simple, straightforward solutions over more sophisticated ones
• Drive innovation and continuous improvement in technology and methodologies to continuously increase productivity and ensure that technology standards and best practices are maintained across each area of focus
• Drive the planning and allocation for the development of the defined technology roadmap and develop, implement and maintain a disaster recovery plan
• Supervise security of a dedicated area and continue to upgrade it; supervise application performance and review any application failures
• Run and own the team in challenging and pushing the boundaries of innovation and technology
• Establish technical standards and ensure consistency to them for product development and company operations
• Experience with cloud platforms (e.g. Azure, AWS, etc.).
• Experience working with multiple software development methodologies including Scrum & Kanban.

You will need

• Experience in backend development with micro-services.
• Experience with Node.JS, Javascript/Typescript, GraphQL, REST API methodologies and API Gateways.
• Knowledge of Cloud Technologies (Preferably Azure).
• Knowledge of TDD, CI/CD, Automation on cloud and on premise. 
• Large Scale Applications Development, Operations and migration in enterprise environments.
• People management, Emotional Intelligence, Problem Solving and Analytical Skills.

About us

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.