Senior Software Engineer - Food (Distributed Systems)

As part of the M&S Software Engineering team, you'll be joining a well-loved historic brand, working on solutions that serve 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 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.

The M&S Foods Product team is looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our dynamic team. You will provide technical expertise, ship thoughtful solutions and operate with excellence. Creative, curious and fearless, you will be an integral part of our empowered, self-managing domain engineering team, pushing the boundaries of how we ingest, model and distribute food-related data across M&S.

The team owns the platform that supports supplier systems, price and promotion information, product lifecycle and master data, and critical supply chain data flows. We sit at a unique intersection, providing high-quality, timely data to colleagues and partners while enabling internal teams to build on a robust food data platform.

Due to high interest, this role may close earlier than advertised. We recommend applying as soon as possible.

What You'll Do

Your key accountabilities will include

• Build and evolve reliable data services by designing and developing scalable, high-performance pipelines and APIs in Java and Micronaut, integrating with event-streaming platforms such as Kafka to ensure accurate and timely data delivery.
• Own features end-to-end, from design and development through testing, deployment and production support, balancing delivery speed with long-term maintainability and sustainability.
• Shape the technical direction of the Food Platform by contributing to platform architecture, defining clean data contracts, schemas and event models, and balancing performance, cost and usability considerations.
• Champion engineering excellence through clean, maintainable and well-tested code, promoting best practices through code reviews, pair programming, documentation and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Drive operational excellence and observability by designing effective monitoring and alerting, leveraging tools such as Dynatrace and participating in support activities to ensure critical supply chain and pricing data remains available and accurate.
• Collaborate closely with Product Managers, Engineering teams, Supply Chain and Commercial stakeholders to solve complex business problems and accelerate value delivery through effective cross-functional working.
• Mentor and support colleagues by providing coaching, technical guidance and feedback, helping to grow engineering capability and foster an inclusive, high-performing engineering culture.

Who You Are

Your skills and experience will include

• Significant experience building and scaling data-intensive distributed systems, ideally supporting large datasets, high transaction volumes and mission-critical business processes.
• Strong proficiency in JVM-based technologies, particularly Java, with experience developing scalable backend services and ideally working with Micronaut.
• Hands-on experience implementing DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines and engineering automation, including tools such as GitHub Actions and Infrastructure as Code technologies like Terraform.
• Strong knowledge of cloud platforms, preferably Azure, alongside modern data integration technologies including Kafka, SFTP, relational databases, MongoDB and SaaS integrations.
• Experience designing data models, data contracts and schema evolution strategies, with a strong understanding of domain-driven design and enterprise integration patterns.
• Ability to balance strategic thinking with pragmatic delivery, making effective technical decisions that meet both long-term architectural goals and immediate business needs.
• Strong focus on software quality, security and operational excellence, with experience using tools such as Snyk, Semgrep and other modern security and code-quality platforms.
• Interest and practical experience in AI-assisted development, leveraging tools such as GitHub Copilot and Claude to improve productivity while maintaining engineering quality.
• Broad engineering awareness across the full technology stack, including an understanding of frontend technologies such as React and Angular to support effective collaboration across teams.

Desirable Experience

• Experience within retail, supply chain, product lifecycle management, pricing or master data platforms.
• Experience designing event-driven architectures and data platforms using Kafka and modern cloud-native technologies.
• Experience mentoring engineers and contributing to engineering communities, standards and best practices.

Tech Stack

M&S uses a variety of technologies, including:

• Backend: Java, Spring, Spring Boot, Micronaut
• Frontend: React, Next.js, TypeScript, Angular
• Cloud & Infrastructure: Azure Cloud, Kubernetes
• Observability: Dynatrace
• Databases: SQL Server, MongoDB
• Caching & Performance: Ignite, Redis

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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