Head of Software Development - Customer APIs

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 £7,320 per annum
• Holiday starting at 25 days plus a personal day (plus Bank holidays)
• Retirement savings plan - save between 6% and 10% and Tesco will match your contribution
• Life Assurance - 5 x contractual pay
• Private medical insurance offered by Bupa
• 24/7 virtual GP service, Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) for you and your family, free access to a range of experts to support your mental wellbeing
• Access to our colleague networks providing a space for colleagues to come together from a range of backgrounds. For more information about our colleague networks please click here

Click Here to read more about the benefits we have available for our colleagues

About the role

This is an exciting opportunity to play a leading role in the service of millions of Tesco customers.

The Customer APIs domain contains a set of critical strategic APIs that allow us to understand our customers, manage how we interact with them, and deliver better, more personalised experiences. Some of the core APIs include:

· Address: a global address service that underpins many other APIs and systems. Powers the geo-spatial functionality that allows us to accurately deliver to our customers across multiple countries.

· Contact: manages all outbound transactional communication with our customers and at considerably scale - through voice, text, email and post. It also maintains a history of all customer interactions.

· Profile: stores and manages important personal information about our millions of customers. Used as basis for segmentation, which drives personalisation and customer experience improvements.

We operate a data-led, agile product-based approach – balancing the delivery of ambitious change with our commitment to the highest possible standards of security, availability, and performance.

As a Head of Software Development at Tesco, you will be responsible for the engineering teams that build, run and support Customer APIs, and of course for the engineering qualities of the products within. You will have a team of around 40 people split across the UK and Poland. You will also have opportunities to contribute more widely across Tesco Technology as a senior engineering leader.

You will be responsible for

· Cultivate an open, trusting culture based on empowerment and continuous incremental improvement

· Define and drive a clear technical strategy for Customer API solutions, working in close collaboration with Product Management

· Contribute to high-level trade-off discussions and roadmap prioritisation

· Mentor and grow the capabilities of our engineers, leading by example

· Take accountability for non-functional outcomes including security, performance, availability, and reliability. Our engineering teams operate with a DevOps mindset, running what they build. This includes in and out-of-hours support.

· Work across Tesco Technology on wider technical initiatives and strategy.

· Drive continuous improvement in our technology, processes and ways of working

· Manage the overall budget for the teams

You will need

Skills & Experience:

· Experience leading, growing, and developing a distributed team of 40+, including managing managers.

· Proven track record of delivering impactful change.

· Deep knowledge and experience working across the full SDLC in an Agile / DevOps culture.

· Experience working in close partnership with product colleagues.

· Significant experience building and operating distributed software solutions at scale.

· Broad hands-on technology background - including practical expertise in API development, testing, Cloud infrastructure, databases (SQL and no-SQL), continuous deployment and operational tooling.

· Experience managing PII data and/or working in secure/regulated environments (desirable).

Personal Attributes:

· Exceptional written and verbal communication skills. You can create a compelling vision of the future and communicate and influence effectively at all levels.

· Proactive and organised. You can operate effectively in a demanding and dynamic environment, maintaining clarity and focus.

· Excellent judgement. Using data to make informed decisions, being bold whilst balancing risk, making trade-off decisions based on experience and an understanding of multiple perspectives.

· Strong and versatile problem-solving skills.

· 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.

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 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.

We’re a big business and we can offer a range of diverse full-time & part-time working patterns across our many business areas, which means that we can find something that works for you.  We work in a more blended pattern - combining office and remote working. Our offices will continue to be where we connect, collaborate and innovate. Please talk to us about how this can work for you - Everyone is welcome at Tesco.