Marks & Spencer Plc
City Of Westminster, London
We are seeking a visionary Head of Software Engineering to lead our Personalisation team. Reporting to the Senior Head of Software Engineering, you will play a pivotal role in shaping our technology strategy, influencing enterprise-wide engineering practices, and ensuring our capabilities meet the highest standards of security, compliance, and performance. As part of the M&S Software Engineering team, you'll be joining a well-loved historic brand, working on solutions that serves millions of loyal customers and thousands of colleagues! With ethical values that run right through the company's core and technology leaders that truly understand software engineers and engineering, it's an exciting time as we're redefining ourselves into a digital first and engineering-led organisation, with the quality of our engineering team being a key differentiator. We are seeking a passionate Head of Software Engineering who will provide technical expertise, ship thoughtfully and operate with excellence. Being creative, curious, and confident, you will be an integral part of our empowered, self-managing, multi-disciplinary engineering teams - designing, building, releasing, and maintaining products. Working as an equal partner with the Product, Data Science and Delivery teams you will deliver sophisticated and robust solutions to solve daring problems for our customers and colleagues. You'll be joining the leadership for the Personalisation product group, who are responsible for our on-site and in-app personalisation, search and recommendations capabilities. The teams in this area work on some of the most innovative features in M&S, e.g. 1:1 Personalised Search and AI Stylist. Teams within this product group are highly cross functional, blending engineering, data science, product, design and delivery. You'll help deliver the vision of 1:1 personalisation across our estate and help make M&S feel like it was merchandised specifically for each customer individually. You will play a key role in driving our ambition to create a best in class software engineering team, environment, and culture. We are looking for people to join our community of engineers to drive this transformation, build a modern digital ecosystem using exciting technologies and do the best work of their careers. Team 2-8 Engineering Managers (Engineering Managers are responsible for 5-9 Engineers each). 4-8 Squads in a strategic Product Group (50-75 Engineers) What you will be doing The Head of Software Engineering role is the embodiment of 'solving problems through technology' with key responsibilities as follows: Lead, develop and inspire Engineering Managers and teams, fostering a strong learning culture, high quality engineering standards, and clear development and talent strategies. Partner closely with Product, Delivery and Technology leadership to shape strategy, prioritise roadmaps, solve complex problems, and maximise value to colleagues and customers. Drive technical excellence and modern engineering practices, including DevOps, clean code, automation, architecture design, and the adoption of standard frameworks, policies, and North Star principles. Own Product Group outcomes and health, setting OKRs, ensuring reliability, quality, SLI/SLO performance, and full operational support across products. Champion innovation, continuous improvement and agile ways of working, encouraging experimentation, pragmatism, and commercially sound delivery. Build and scale high performing teams and communities, leading recruitment, onboarding, coaching, Communities of Practice, and contributing to wider engineering brand and culture. Tech stack M&S uses a variety of technologies including React, Next.js, Typescript Java Kotlin Python Swift GraphQL Federation Cloud: Azure While M&S is principally a Java environment, the Personalisation group has a mix of Python and Java teams. What you will need to have Significant hands on experience as a polyglot senior software engineer, with strong expertise across front end, back end, APIs, cloud infrastructure, and modern development frameworks. Leading large product areas with 5+ teams Knowledge of Personalisation, Recommendation and Search concepts and their relation to e commerce. Ideally you would have awareness of the current state of the art. Proven ability to design and evolve complex systems, with deep knowledge of software architecture, system design, cloud native patterns, and engineering standard methodologies. Strong experience delivering, operating and scaling software at Product Group level and above, including building, leading and hiring senior engineering teams. Advanced DevOps, testing and reliability engineering expertise, embracing CI/CD, automation, observability, and a "you build it, you run it" ownership model. Experience working closely with Product and Data Science teams, translating ambiguous requirements into robust technical solutions within customer centric environments. Technically credible people leader and servant leader, able to line manage and influence senior engineers and engineering managers, drive technical outcomes, and communicate effectively with both technical and non technical stakeholders. What's In It For You Working at M&S means being part of something bigger - helping to deliver quality, value and service to millions of customers every day. We're inclusive, fast moving and always evolving, with a strong sense of purpose and a focus on doing the right thing. Here are just a few of the benefits that make working here even more rewarding: 20% colleague discount on all M&S products and many third party brands for you and someone in your household, available once you've completed your probation Competitive holiday allowance with the option to buy more Discretionary bonus schemes linked to your performance and ours Strong pension and life assurance to help plan for the future Tailored induction and training to support your development from day one Exclusive perks and savings through our M&S Choices portal Market leading family policies, including parental, adoption and neonatal leave 24/7 wellbeing support, including virtual GP access and mental health services One paid volunteer day a year to support a cause that matters to you Everyone's Welcome We are ambitious about the future of retail. We're disrupting, innovating and leading the industry into a more conscientious, inspiring digital era. We're transforming how we work together and offering our most exciting opportunities yet. Marks & Spencer strives to be an inclusive organisation, trusted and admired by our colleagues, customers and suppliers. Join us and make change happen. We are committed to building diverse and representative teams, where everyone can bring their whole selves to work and be at their best. We support each other and work together to win together. If you feel you'd benefit from any support or reasonable adjustments during any stage of the recruitment process, please don't hesitate to let us know when completing your application. This information will be picked up by our team, so we can try and put steps in place to help you be at your best through this process.
We are seeking a visionary Head of Software Engineering to lead our Personalisation team. Reporting to the Senior Head of Software Engineering, you will play a pivotal role in shaping our technology strategy, influencing enterprise-wide engineering practices, and ensuring our capabilities meet the highest standards of security, compliance, and performance. As part of the M&S Software Engineering team, you'll be joining a well-loved historic brand, working on solutions that serves millions of loyal customers and thousands of colleagues! With ethical values that run right through the company's core and technology leaders that truly understand software engineers and engineering, it's an exciting time as we're redefining ourselves into a digital first and engineering-led organisation, with the quality of our engineering team being a key differentiator. We are seeking a passionate Head of Software Engineering who will provide technical expertise, ship thoughtfully and operate with excellence. Being creative, curious, and confident, you will be an integral part of our empowered, self-managing, multi-disciplinary engineering teams - designing, building, releasing, and maintaining products. Working as an equal partner with the Product, Data Science and Delivery teams you will deliver sophisticated and robust solutions to solve daring problems for our customers and colleagues. You'll be joining the leadership for the Personalisation product group, who are responsible for our on-site and in-app personalisation, search and recommendations capabilities. The teams in this area work on some of the most innovative features in M&S, e.g. 1:1 Personalised Search and AI Stylist. Teams within this product group are highly cross functional, blending engineering, data science, product, design and delivery. You'll help deliver the vision of 1:1 personalisation across our estate and help make M&S feel like it was merchandised specifically for each customer individually. You will play a key role in driving our ambition to create a best in class software engineering team, environment, and culture. We are looking for people to join our community of engineers to drive this transformation, build a modern digital ecosystem using exciting technologies and do the best work of their careers. Team 2-8 Engineering Managers (Engineering Managers are responsible for 5-9 Engineers each). 4-8 Squads in a strategic Product Group (50-75 Engineers) What you will be doing The Head of Software Engineering role is the embodiment of 'solving problems through technology' with key responsibilities as follows: Lead, develop and inspire Engineering Managers and teams, fostering a strong learning culture, high quality engineering standards, and clear development and talent strategies. Partner closely with Product, Delivery and Technology leadership to shape strategy, prioritise roadmaps, solve complex problems, and maximise value to colleagues and customers. Drive technical excellence and modern engineering practices, including DevOps, clean code, automation, architecture design, and the adoption of standard frameworks, policies, and North Star principles. Own Product Group outcomes and health, setting OKRs, ensuring reliability, quality, SLI/SLO performance, and full operational support across products. Champion innovation, continuous improvement and agile ways of working, encouraging experimentation, pragmatism, and commercially sound delivery. Build and scale high performing teams and communities, leading recruitment, onboarding, coaching, Communities of Practice, and contributing to wider engineering brand and culture. Tech stack M&S uses a variety of technologies including React, Next.js, Typescript Java Kotlin Python Swift GraphQL Federation Cloud: Azure While M&S is principally a Java environment, the Personalisation group has a mix of Python and Java teams. What you will need to have Significant hands on experience as a polyglot senior software engineer, with strong expertise across front end, back end, APIs, cloud infrastructure, and modern development frameworks. Leading large product areas with 5+ teams Knowledge of Personalisation, Recommendation and Search concepts and their relation to e commerce. Ideally you would have awareness of the current state of the art. Proven ability to design and evolve complex systems, with deep knowledge of software architecture, system design, cloud native patterns, and engineering standard methodologies. Strong experience delivering, operating and scaling software at Product Group level and above, including building, leading and hiring senior engineering teams. Advanced DevOps, testing and reliability engineering expertise, embracing CI/CD, automation, observability, and a "you build it, you run it" ownership model. Experience working closely with Product and Data Science teams, translating ambiguous requirements into robust technical solutions within customer centric environments. Technically credible people leader and servant leader, able to line manage and influence senior engineers and engineering managers, drive technical outcomes, and communicate effectively with both technical and non technical stakeholders. What's In It For You Working at M&S means being part of something bigger - helping to deliver quality, value and service to millions of customers every day. We're inclusive, fast moving and always evolving, with a strong sense of purpose and a focus on doing the right thing. Here are just a few of the benefits that make working here even more rewarding: 20% colleague discount on all M&S products and many third party brands for you and someone in your household, available once you've completed your probation Competitive holiday allowance with the option to buy more Discretionary bonus schemes linked to your performance and ours Strong pension and life assurance to help plan for the future Tailored induction and training to support your development from day one Exclusive perks and savings through our M&S Choices portal Market leading family policies, including parental, adoption and neonatal leave 24/7 wellbeing support, including virtual GP access and mental health services One paid volunteer day a year to support a cause that matters to you Everyone's Welcome We are ambitious about the future of retail. We're disrupting, innovating and leading the industry into a more conscientious, inspiring digital era. We're transforming how we work together and offering our most exciting opportunities yet. Marks & Spencer strives to be an inclusive organisation, trusted and admired by our colleagues, customers and suppliers. Join us and make change happen. We are committed to building diverse and representative teams, where everyone can bring their whole selves to work and be at their best. We support each other and work together to win together. If you feel you'd benefit from any support or reasonable adjustments during any stage of the recruitment process, please don't hesitate to let us know when completing your application. This information will be picked up by our team, so we can try and put steps in place to help you be at your best through this process.
Spotify
We think this is a rare opportunity to be part of Spotify's groundbreaking journey as we evolve from an audio-first platform to also become a world-class video service. From offline playback to adaptive streaming with optimized video quality, you will be part of a team that defines how video will be consumed by hundreds of millions Spotify users. Our next challenge is to move more of our pre-render video pipeline, things like decoding, timing, synchronization and adaptive streaming from higher-level native integrations down into a performant, portable C++ stack. By driving this space alongside our existing players, you will shape the APIs, abstractions, and optimizations that make video on Spotify seamless everywhere: across iOS, Android, desktop, and beyond. We think you have many years of solid hands-on experience with video in code, from transcoding, streaming, demuxing, to adaptive bitrate selection and presentation of frames and audio samples. With that type of background this is a very good opportunity to expand your impact to help us at Spotify drive innovation in a space that's becoming increasingly vital to our growth. Joining us now will enable you to greatly influence our journey and make a lasting impact for the years to come. You will be joining an environment with a lot of collaboration, innovation and cross-functional teams that deliver seamless, high-quality video experiences. Your role is to provide the right APIs and implementations to allow all of those teams to serve a first class video experience every time. If you are ready to make an impact and push the boundaries of video technology, we would like to get in touch! What You'll Do Be part of a dynamic team focusing on creating a world-class mobile video experience, optimized for low-bandwidth environments and seamless on-the-go usage. At Spotify, we champion the perfect blend of strategy, creativity, and hands-on coding to drive innovation and deliver exceptional user experiences. Being a technical leader means that you are actively coding (in C++ with Swift and/or Kotlin), writing easy to understand documents and presenting for larger groups and key leaders. Debug complex performance issues across operating systems, device types, and networks. Optimise Spotify's AV stack by driving pre-render logic from platform-specific frameworks like AVFoundation into a cross-platform core to reduce duplication and increase consistency and device reach. Design and implement low-level C++ video components that handle decoding, synchronization, and adaptive playback with minimal overhead. Share expertise in low-level video systems, raising the bar across Spotify engineering. Who You Are A seasoned professional with a proven track record in senior roles, bringing a wealth of expertise and leadership to the table. Passionate about coding and hands-on problem-solving, while actively shaping and driving key strategic decisions. Strong understanding of decoding, synchronization, adaptive bitrate streaming, and frame-level control. Over 8 years of deep, hands-on experience in the video playback domain. Experience with platform-level frameworks like VideoToolbox, MediaCodec, or AVFoundation internals and motivated to generalize that work into reusable C++ systems. A deep understanding of video streaming technologies, with expertise in delivery protocols and the nuances of modern streaming ecosystems. Passionate about building foundations that empower Spotify teams to scale video to hundreds of millions of users. Where You'll Be We are a distributed workforce enabling our band members to find a work mode that is best for them! Where in the world? For this role, it can be within the EMEA region in which we have a work location and is within working hours. Working hours? We operate within the Central European and GMT time zones for collaboration and ask that all be located in that time zone. Prefer an office to work from home instead? Not a problem! We have plenty of options for your working preferences. Find more information about our Work From Anywhere options here. Spotify is an equal opportunity employer. You are welcome at Spotify for who you are, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or what's playing in your headphones. Our platform is for everyone, and so is our workplace. The more voices we have represented and amplified in our business, the more we will all thrive, contribute, and be forward-thinking! So bring us your personal experience, your perspectives, and your background. It's in our differences that we will find the power to keep revolutionizing the way the world listens. At Spotify, we are passionate about inclusivity and making sure our entire recruitment process is accessible to everyone. We have ways to request reasonable accommodations during the interview process and help assist in what you need. If you need accommodations at any stage of the application or interview process, please let us know - we're here to support you in any way we can. Spotify transformed music listening forever when we launched in 2008. Our mission is to unlock the potential of human creativity by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the chance to enjoy and be passionate about these creators. Everything we do is driven by our love for music and podcasting. Today, we are the world's most popular audio streaming subscription service.
We think this is a rare opportunity to be part of Spotify's groundbreaking journey as we evolve from an audio-first platform to also become a world-class video service. From offline playback to adaptive streaming with optimized video quality, you will be part of a team that defines how video will be consumed by hundreds of millions Spotify users. Our next challenge is to move more of our pre-render video pipeline, things like decoding, timing, synchronization and adaptive streaming from higher-level native integrations down into a performant, portable C++ stack. By driving this space alongside our existing players, you will shape the APIs, abstractions, and optimizations that make video on Spotify seamless everywhere: across iOS, Android, desktop, and beyond. We think you have many years of solid hands-on experience with video in code, from transcoding, streaming, demuxing, to adaptive bitrate selection and presentation of frames and audio samples. With that type of background this is a very good opportunity to expand your impact to help us at Spotify drive innovation in a space that's becoming increasingly vital to our growth. Joining us now will enable you to greatly influence our journey and make a lasting impact for the years to come. You will be joining an environment with a lot of collaboration, innovation and cross-functional teams that deliver seamless, high-quality video experiences. Your role is to provide the right APIs and implementations to allow all of those teams to serve a first class video experience every time. If you are ready to make an impact and push the boundaries of video technology, we would like to get in touch! What You'll Do Be part of a dynamic team focusing on creating a world-class mobile video experience, optimized for low-bandwidth environments and seamless on-the-go usage. At Spotify, we champion the perfect blend of strategy, creativity, and hands-on coding to drive innovation and deliver exceptional user experiences. Being a technical leader means that you are actively coding (in C++ with Swift and/or Kotlin), writing easy to understand documents and presenting for larger groups and key leaders. Debug complex performance issues across operating systems, device types, and networks. Optimise Spotify's AV stack by driving pre-render logic from platform-specific frameworks like AVFoundation into a cross-platform core to reduce duplication and increase consistency and device reach. Design and implement low-level C++ video components that handle decoding, synchronization, and adaptive playback with minimal overhead. Share expertise in low-level video systems, raising the bar across Spotify engineering. Who You Are A seasoned professional with a proven track record in senior roles, bringing a wealth of expertise and leadership to the table. Passionate about coding and hands-on problem-solving, while actively shaping and driving key strategic decisions. Strong understanding of decoding, synchronization, adaptive bitrate streaming, and frame-level control. Over 8 years of deep, hands-on experience in the video playback domain. Experience with platform-level frameworks like VideoToolbox, MediaCodec, or AVFoundation internals and motivated to generalize that work into reusable C++ systems. A deep understanding of video streaming technologies, with expertise in delivery protocols and the nuances of modern streaming ecosystems. Passionate about building foundations that empower Spotify teams to scale video to hundreds of millions of users. Where You'll Be We are a distributed workforce enabling our band members to find a work mode that is best for them! Where in the world? For this role, it can be within the EMEA region in which we have a work location and is within working hours. Working hours? We operate within the Central European and GMT time zones for collaboration and ask that all be located in that time zone. Prefer an office to work from home instead? Not a problem! We have plenty of options for your working preferences. Find more information about our Work From Anywhere options here. Spotify is an equal opportunity employer. You are welcome at Spotify for who you are, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or what's playing in your headphones. Our platform is for everyone, and so is our workplace. The more voices we have represented and amplified in our business, the more we will all thrive, contribute, and be forward-thinking! So bring us your personal experience, your perspectives, and your background. It's in our differences that we will find the power to keep revolutionizing the way the world listens. At Spotify, we are passionate about inclusivity and making sure our entire recruitment process is accessible to everyone. We have ways to request reasonable accommodations during the interview process and help assist in what you need. If you need accommodations at any stage of the application or interview process, please let us know - we're here to support you in any way we can. Spotify transformed music listening forever when we launched in 2008. Our mission is to unlock the potential of human creativity by giving a million creative artists the opportunity to live off their art and billions of fans the chance to enjoy and be passionate about these creators. Everything we do is driven by our love for music and podcasting. Today, we are the world's most popular audio streaming subscription service.
Hays Technology
City, Manchester
Prestigious opportunity for a Senior Applications Engineer with a Global Investment Management company expanding its new offices in Manchester.We are seeking a Senior Application Engineer (Backend cloud-based application development), with deep technical expertise and thought leadership. You will drive strategy for your area of expertise across teams and foster a developer community within your domain. The role involves mentoring junior staff, ensuring high-quality deliverables, promoting best practices like TDD and BDD, and leading engineering practices across the SDLC. As a Senior Applications Engineer you will be responsible for:- Providing technical expertise in Backend Development, supporting the team with effective solutions and practical insights Participating in all phases of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), including requirements gathering, development, deployment, and ongoing maintenance Contributing new ideas, tools, and methodologies to help foster a culture of continuous improvement and innovation within the team Sharing knowledge and mentoring peers and junior engineers, supporting their growth and skills development Collaborating with technical leads, IT teams, and business stakeholders to understand project requirements, implications, and dependencies Reviewing and providing feedback on technical documentation, suggesting improvements where appropriate Promoting the best development approaches such as Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) to deliver high-quality, maintainable code If you possess a combination of some of the following skills, then LETS TALK! Experience in Java development Backend cloud-based application development Understanding of API design for mobile applications with event-driven architecture Strong analysis and problem-solving skills Preferred - Experience of building distributed scalable microservices using Java/Kotlin, Spring Boot, OAuth 2.0, Secure API design A working understanding of technologies/areas: AWS, API Design, Automation testing In return, you will be rewarded with a highly competitive benefits package including a bonus and ongoing career development and training. What you need to do now If you're interested in this role, click 'apply now' to forward an up-to-date copy of your CV, or call us now. If this job isn't quite right for you, but you are looking for a new position, please contact us for a confidential discussion about your career. Hays Specialist Recruitment Limited acts as an employment agency for permanent recruitment and employment business for the supply of temporary workers. By applying for this job you accept the T&C's, Privacy Policy and Disclaimers which can be found at (url removed)
Prestigious opportunity for a Senior Applications Engineer with a Global Investment Management company expanding its new offices in Manchester.We are seeking a Senior Application Engineer (Backend cloud-based application development), with deep technical expertise and thought leadership. You will drive strategy for your area of expertise across teams and foster a developer community within your domain. The role involves mentoring junior staff, ensuring high-quality deliverables, promoting best practices like TDD and BDD, and leading engineering practices across the SDLC. As a Senior Applications Engineer you will be responsible for:- Providing technical expertise in Backend Development, supporting the team with effective solutions and practical insights Participating in all phases of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), including requirements gathering, development, deployment, and ongoing maintenance Contributing new ideas, tools, and methodologies to help foster a culture of continuous improvement and innovation within the team Sharing knowledge and mentoring peers and junior engineers, supporting their growth and skills development Collaborating with technical leads, IT teams, and business stakeholders to understand project requirements, implications, and dependencies Reviewing and providing feedback on technical documentation, suggesting improvements where appropriate Promoting the best development approaches such as Test-Driven Development (TDD) and Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) to deliver high-quality, maintainable code If you possess a combination of some of the following skills, then LETS TALK! Experience in Java development Backend cloud-based application development Understanding of API design for mobile applications with event-driven architecture Strong analysis and problem-solving skills Preferred - Experience of building distributed scalable microservices using Java/Kotlin, Spring Boot, OAuth 2.0, Secure API design A working understanding of technologies/areas: AWS, API Design, Automation testing In return, you will be rewarded with a highly competitive benefits package including a bonus and ongoing career development and training. What you need to do now If you're interested in this role, click 'apply now' to forward an up-to-date copy of your CV, or call us now. If this job isn't quite right for you, but you are looking for a new position, please contact us for a confidential discussion about your career. Hays Specialist Recruitment Limited acts as an employment agency for permanent recruitment and employment business for the supply of temporary workers. By applying for this job you accept the T&C's, Privacy Policy and Disclaimers which can be found at (url removed)
