Head Of Software Development - Quote API

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 of up to 45% of base salary
• Car allowance of £7320 per annum
• Holiday starting at 25 days plus a personal day (and bank holidays)
• Private medical insurance offered through Bupa
• Retirement savings plan – save between 4% and 7.5% and Tesco will match your contribution
• Life Assurance at 5x contractual pay
• Buy as you earn and Save as you earn share schemes

About the role

Quote API is an HTTP service that is responsible for pricing a customer’s basket, which involves applying prices, promotions and taxes. Promotions covers everything from simple price cuts to multibuys, colleague discount, earning Clubcard points and much more. An invoice is published for each completed customer transaction, which drives finance, restocking of stores etc. This is a critical strategic API within Tesco, powering all tills, online shopping and apps across the UK and ultimately all of the countries in which Tesco operates. It handles tens of thousands of requests per second in the cloud, which can be expected to increase significantly into the future.

We are building systems to solve real world problems at scale, with impact for tens of millions of people

You will be responsible for

As head of software development, you are responsible for the engineering team that builds, runs and supports Quote API, and of course for the engineering qualities of the product itself. You are also encouraged to contribute more widely across Tesco Technology as a senior engineering leader.

Solving hard technical problems, especially for distributed systems at enterprise scale, is part of the job, but the engineering leaders within the teams are encouraged to do much of this. You will need to partake in many discussions and use your excellent analytical abilities, insight and judgement to make difficult decisions, always considering the impacts on customers and colleagues. You will tend to be involved in early requirements discussions along with product managers, bringing exciting new Tesco programmes to life.

Team size of up to 50 individuals, you will directly line manage the Software Development Managers, who are key in working towards your goals, and take on the bulk of the line management duties for the rest of the team,

You will need

Depth of professional software engineering experience and standard methodologies across the full software development process.

Awareness of current technology standards, industry trends and new technologies.

Hands on expertise in many disparate technologies, typically ranging from front-end user interfaces through to back-end systems and all points in between

Strong background in secure, reliable distributed systems at scale.

Knowledge and experience of cloud technologies, (preferably AWS or Azure) and modern programming languages (Java 8+ ) Experience with both SQL/NoSQL databases and experience using Spring.

Experience with data stores (both relational and non-relational); service-oriented architectures and knowledge of best practice in secure systems construction

Consistent track record in leading and evolving teams of software engineers through the full agile product development lifecycle whilst improving their capability.

Ability to prioritise multiple and contending priorities within a fast-paced environment

Experience of running and supporting software in production with appropriate use of metrics to judge service health.

Understanding of collaboration in a matrix organization

Experience in payment and retail systems would be a bonus but isn’t crucial

Skills relevant to this job:

• Great at hiring and growing talent as well as experience leading teams (15+) of developers, ideally across multi-location sites
• Validated leadership skills and team development capabilities
• Experience in payments or real-time pricing or authentication/authorisation or trading and similar.
• High propensity to problem solving
• Collaborative and self-motivated in approach
• Ability to influence and persuade others with excellent communication skills and analytical ability
• Methodical, organised and committed in approach with a shown resiliency to cope with high pressure situations (e.g. release cycles)

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.

We’re proud to have been accredited Disability Confident Leader and we’re committed to providing a fully inclusive and accessible recruitment process. For further information on the accessibility support we can offer, please click here.