Head of Software Engineering - HR

We're changing the way we do things and putting industry leading innovation at the heart of how we operate; we need a stellar engineering team to make it happen. You'll be joining one of the most iconic brands in the UK on its most exciting cycle yet. We're more integrated and product led in our tech teams than ever before: learning, changing, and adapting constantly, with millions of people benefiting from your work every single day.

You’ll be joining M&S as the Head of Software Engineering - Corporate HR. Our mission is to deliver reliable, scalable and integrated technology that supports the full colleague lifecycle at M&S - from recruitment through to retirement, including workforce management, reward, learning, colleague services and wellbeing.

You will lead multiple engineering teams, through Engineering Managers, responsible for a complex and integration-heavy HR technology estate built around platforms such as Oracle HCM and Blue Yonder, alongside a wide range of specialist systems and third-party services.

You will support your teams and help direct the technical vision for how we manage a distributed ecosystem of platforms, integrations and data flows - ensuring services are reliable, secure and scalable across HR, payroll, identity, finance and reporting systems.

We want to make M&S one of the best places for software development, target the latest tooling and enable our engineers to focus on delivering high-quality colleague experiences so that they don’t get held up by fragmented systems or legacy complexity.

What You'll Do

• Being accountable for engineering excellence across multiple teams, from behaviours to operations, from technical direction to solutions in production and from capability growth to organisational reputation.
• Cultivating strong leadership and accountability through Engineering Managers, with a clear sense of purpose and thoughtful talent management.
• Lead alignment with the overarching technical strategy and working with the wider Technology organisation to craft and evolve it.
• Act as an owner of the HR technology estate, applying product thinking to enable and empower colleague-facing systems through data and customer centricity.
• Collaborate with the entire engineering leadership, HR, Product, Architecture and wider stakeholders to ensure alignment, reduce complexity and maintain the ability to “think big”.
• Line management of Engineering Managers, as well as driving recruitment and retention across the teams.
• Act as custodian of OKR’s within your area.
• Be accountable for a complex, integration-heavy estate including Oracle HCM, Blue Yonder and a wide ecosystem of third-party platforms.
• Own and improve integrations, interfaces and data flows across HR systems, payroll, identity and access management, finance and reporting.
• Ensure systems and integrations are secure, reliable, observable and supportable, with clear ownership, runbooks and service measures.
• Drive strong engineering practices across architecture, documentation, testing, CI/CD, production operations, incident management and service ownership.
• Simplify legacy technology, reduce complexity and manage technical debt across a multi-vendor environment.
• Support engineering communities to drive bar raising, strategic alignment and continuous improvement.
• When vendors are involved, act as the key technical partner, owning them as a vital part of the estate with the same level of reliability and satisfaction as in-house capabilities.

Who You Are

• Extensive background in software engineering, with experience leading multiple teams through Engineering Managers in complex environments.
• Strong track record of improving engineering quality, service reliability and delivery performance across business-critical systems.
• Experience managing integration-heavy estates with multiple third-party platforms, vendors, interfaces and dependencies.
• Strong understanding of system design, software architecture, APIs, integration patterns and event-driven systems.
• Experience working with enterprise SaaS platforms, ideally within HR, payroll or workforce management domains.
• Promoter of DevOps: taking ownership of systems and ensuring end-to-end accountability.
• Strong understanding of testing strategies and reliability engineering.
• Excellent people management, interpersonal, analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to lead Engineering Managers and senior stakeholders to a desired outcome without prescribing solutions.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and spoken, and able to adjust for different audiences, including non-technical stakeholders.
• A leadership mentality that values clarity, simplicity, ownership and high engineering standards.
• Able to influence people at senior levels across both technical and non-technical environments.

Our Tech Stack

• Oracle HCM
• Blue Yonder
• SD Worx
• Oracle Helpdesk / CRM
• Learning Pool
• OrgVue
• Oracle Business Intelligence & Data Warehouse
• Multiple third-party HR, recruitment, payroll and reward platforms
• APIs, integrations and cloud technologies across a distributed estate

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.

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