Head of Software Development – Colleague Transformation Programme

About the role

About The Colleague Transformation Programme

Tesco is the UK’s largest private employer and a world leader in Retail. Securing, managing & optimising colleague data and payroll is a huge operation and gives us great opportunity to create some fantastic propositions for our colleagues. This program aims to deliver/maintain several systems for our colleagues to create these propositions.

Job Summary

As Head of Software Development at Tesco you hold a senior engineering management role and is the first level at which you manage other managers. You impact positively the teams you lead, the people you manage and the domain you are responsible for, leading the plans to drive the team forward, ensuring a clear sense of purpose and vision. You hire, retain, and engage engineering managers and senior engineering talent. You develop the environment to enable your teams to succeed in delivering and operating quality software, empowering teams to own technical decisions. Comfortable with software economics, you are the budget owner for your domain. You lead and drive the technical strategy for teams you manage, ensuring they are aligned to the wider technology strategy. You are a strong decision maker who can act decisively when required. You work with key stakeholders, ensuring teams deliver the right value.

Key people and teams you’ll work with within and outside of Tesco:

- Engineering managers and teams that report to me.

- Technology wide engineering leadership.

- Product leadership for the teams that partner with me.

- Programme teams.

- Key business stakeholders.

- 3rd party engineering, product and programme teams when applicable.

What is in it for you

Hybrid work

We know life looks a little different for each of us. That’s why at Tesco, we always welcome chats about different flexible working options. Some people are at the start of their careers, some want the freedom to do the things they love. Others are going through life-changing moments like becoming a carer, adapting to parenthood, or something else. So, talk to us throughout your application about how we can support.

This role requires you to be based in or near Kraków, as you will spend 60% (3 days) of your week collaborating with colleagues at our office locations or local sites and the rest remotely.

Benefits

Tesco is a diverse and exciting employer, dedicated to being #aplacetogeton, providing career-defining opportunities to all of our colleagues. If you chose to join our business, we will provide you with: 

• Permanent contract from the go – as a sign of our trust in your abilities. 

• Up to 45% yearly salary bonus – based on both individual and business performance 

• Car allowance 

• Additional 4 days of paid leave to support your well-being and family life 

• Extensive private healthcare - complex care package including a wide range of specialists, medical services and free flu vaccination 

• Cafeteria & Multisport – subsidized MyBenefit cafeteria platform with option to use the funds n multisport card. 

• IP Tax Deductible Costs 

• Learning opportunities - certified technical training and learning platforms like Udemy 

• Referral Bonus – You’ll get 4500 PLN for each colleague you successfully refer to work with us. 

• Optional life insurance – wide variety of insurance options from our partner, available optionally at a significant discount 

If that sounds exciting, then we'd love to hear from you! 

Tesco is committed to celebrating diversity and everyone is welcome at Tesco. As a Disability Confident Employer, we’re committed to providing a fully inclusive and accessible recruitment process, allowing candidates the opportunity to thrive and inform us of any reasonable adjustments they may require. 

You will be responsible for

In this job, I am accountable for:

·       I am accountable for delivering impact across teams of teams within a directorate, as well as for effecting and leading change across the wider Technology organisation.

·       I take responsibility to lead my team with a clear sense of purpose & vision.

·       I am a strong decision maker, enabling and protecting the people working within my teams so they can contribute their best.

·       I promote a culture of inclusion, autonomy, mastery and delivery through directing, mentoring, coaching and facilitation aligned to the broader technology organisation and Tesco values.

·       I ensure all colleagues are supported in their careers, with personal/professional development objectives and through continuous feedback and training.

·       I hire, retain, and engage engineering managers and senior engineering talent by creating and framing the right opportunities and challenges.

·       I balance organisational needs, current capabilities of my team and technology strategy, owning plans to drive my team forward.

·       I build an effective execution process to ensure my teams have awareness of overarching strategy, enabling them to be responsive during planning, development, and operational issues.

·       I work with key stakeholders to ensure my teams deliver business value.

·       I act decisively when required and am comfortable with managing ambiguity. As the budget owner for my domain, I am comfortable with software economics, deciding when to buy or build a given solution, justify expenditure and manage internal costs.

·       I have a good view of engineering process best practice, productivity, and quality metrics.

·       I drive continuous improvement of engineering practises, efficiency of development and foster innovation.

·       I empower my engineers to own technical decisions whilst providing guidance and am responsible for best practices.

·       I strive to reduce waste, iterate quickly, and fail fast and forward.

·       I take responsibility to build industry leading and extensible software in my area of ownership.

·       I lead and drive my teams towards the right designs, architectural and programming principles, aligning to Tesco Technology’s agreed standards.

·       I can evaluate the design and architectural decisions/choices of technical teams under me and advise on improvements to optimise systems and solutions.

·       I have a strong understanding of the complete Software Development Lifecycle.

·       I can efficiently manage production issues while keeping key stakeholders informed.

·       I help my team to continually evolve the maturity of their development practices and am accountable for the operational availability and reliability of the software my teams build.

·       I balance the technical aspects of my teams’ solutions against the cost of those solutions both from a build and run perspective.

You will need

Experience relevant for this job:

• Experience of managing other managers.

• Experience leading the design, development and operation of domain areas, comprised of multiple software systems.

• Demonstrated experience designing, developing and running highly-scalable distributed systems. Experience implementing a range of design and architecture patterns.

• Experience of technical leadership within a team.

Key Technical Skills and Experience:

• 15-20 years of experience in developing and managing enterprise scale systems.

• Proficiency in modern software development technologies, which may include:

• Java, RxJava, SpringBoot

• React and Node JS

• Kafka, PostgreSQL and Couchbase

• Docker, Kubernetes, Jenkins, Azure DevOps, Splunk, AppDynamics, New Relic

• Azure Cloud

• Strong experience in system design and code reviews.

• Familiarity with Agile and Scrum methodologies.

• A proven record of accomplishment in delivering technology; having done so across multiple teams in multiple geographies.

Operational skills relevant for this job:

• Programming

• System Design

• Development Practise

• Infrastructure Software Security

• Operations and Maintenance

• Core Technology

• Development Lifecycle

• Product Methodologies

• Retail Technology Awareness

• Communication & Influencing

About us

Tesco is a leading multinational retailer, with more than 330 000 colleagues. 

Our software is used by millions of people across several countries every day. Whether it’s the tills and websites our customers use, or the systems our colleagues and partners use, you’ll play your part in keeping it running like a well-oiled machine. And when a business problem pops up? You and the creative minds in our team will be challenged to solve it. 

As Tech Hub we cooperate within the group of Tesco Technology Hubs located in the UK, Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and India. 

What our colleagues like the most at Tesco: 

• We develop our own products 

• We make an impact; large scale of operation 

• Accountability and respect are given to us 

• We cooperate and support each other 

• There are great colleagues who are divided into small teams here 

• We can develop and learn new things