Staff AI Software Engineer - AI Engineering Platform
Role overview
This section tells you all you need to know about the position and its responsibilities, outlining everything we hope to see in a successful candidate.
All the details
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.
We are seeking a passionate Staff Software Engineer who will provide technical expertise, ship thoughtfully and operate with excellence. Being creative, curious, and fearless, 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 and Delivery teams you will deliver elegant and robust solutions to solve complex problems for our customers and colleagues.
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.
Responsibilities
- check_circle Software Development: Write, test, and debug code for complex features, distributed systems, or legacy migrations. Lead on designing and optimising deployment pipelines.
- check_circle Technical Leadership: Provide technical guidance and support on complex, high-impact projects that align with team objectives, ensuring successful delivery of software solutions, while tackling the hardest technical challenges for the team.
- check_circle Architecture and Design: Lead the development of architectural and design solutions for large-scale projects, ensuring that software solutions align with business requirements, long-term technology strategy, and technology standards.
- check_circle Code Review: Review and provide constructive feedback on code submissions from team members, ensuring alignment to technical standards, maintainability, and high-quality software.
- check_circle Collaboration: Communicate and collaborate with a diverse range of collaborators, including senior management and external partners, while leading or starting communities of practice.
- check_circle Mentorship: Actively mentor and coach engineers at all levels, fostering an environment of continuous learning and growth, while participating in hiring processes and training engineers up to Staff standard.
- check_circle Operational Stability: Demonstrate a production first attitude, continuously considering observability and maintaining Service Level Objectives, while delivering change at pace.
- check_circle Research & Innovation: Embrace emerging technologies and trends, and share insights with the organisation, while developing and maintaining the team technology roadmap and leading on the strategic approach to monitoring and maintaining production systems.
- check_circle Documentation: Write advanced system and operations documentation and perform advanced internal tech talks to share knowledge and best practices.
- check_circle Recruitment & Onboarding: Assist with the recruitment and onboarding of new engineers into the organisation
- check_circle Strong experience in most tech stack areas, from front-end through to back-end
- check_circle Expert understanding of software development practices
- check_circle Solid expertise with distributed version controls systems like Git
- check_circle Proficiency with Test Driven Development, Behaviour Driven Development and non-functional testing
- check_circle Strong experience of DevOps: you build it, you run it
- check_circle Knowledge of modern front-end techniques - edge computing, micro-frontends, server components
- check_circle Experience with developer productivity frameworks such as DORA and SPACE
- check_circle Advocate of Continuous integration and Continuous Delivery
- check_circle Experience with cloud engineering and highly scalable applications
- check_circle Proficiency of documenting software design technical decisions and recommendations
- check_circle Great leadership and coaching skills with the ability to develop engineering colleagues
- check_circle GitHub Copilot SDK, GitHub Actions, and GitHub developer tooling
- check_circle Agentic workflows, tool integrations, and developer automation
- check_circle LLM application patterns including RAG, evaluations, prompts, and orchestration
- check_circle Model evaluation, quality measurement, safety testing, and observability
- check_circle Secure AI integrations, identity, access control, and governance
- check_circle Platform architecture, APIs, extensibility, and integration patterns
- check_circle Cloud deployments, CI/CD, reliability, and operational excellence
- check_circle TypeScript, Kotlin, or another modern language for production platform development
- check_circle 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
- check_circle Competitive holiday allowance with the option to buy more
- check_circle Discretionary bonus schemes linked to your performance and ours
- check_circle Strong pension and life assurance to help plan for the future
- check_circle Tailored induction and training to support your development from day one
- check_circle Exclusive perks and savings through our M&S Choices portal
- check_circle Market-leading family policies, including parental, adoption and neonatal leave
- check_circle 24/7 wellbeing support, including virtual GP access and mental health services
- check_circle One paid volunteer day a year to support a cause that matters to you
Preferred qualifications
- Wellbeing hub
- ### Wellbeing hub
- Giving back
- ### Giving back
- Pay
- ### Pay
- Colleague discount
- ### Colleague discount
- Time off
- ### Time off
- Bonus
- ### Bonus
- Life assurance
- ### Life assurance
- Workplace savings
- ### Workplace savings
- My Choices
- ### My Choices
- Cycle to work
- ### Cycle to work
- Smart tech
- ### Smart tech
- Family friendly policy
- ### Family friendly policy
- Wellbeing hub
- Giving back
- Pay
- Colleague discount
- Time off
- Bonus
- Life assurance
- Workplace savings
- My Choices
- Cycle to work
- Smart tech
- Family friendly policy
Benefits
Wellbeing hub
Get access to resources to support your wellbeing, including a free virtual GP service.
Giving back
Support your favourite charities by donating through your pay or even volunteering for them.
Pay
Earn a competitive salary.
Colleague discount
After completing your probation period, you'll receive 20% colleague discount across all M&S products and many of our third-party brands for you and a member of your household.
Please note only contracts of more than 12 weeks are eligible for this benefit.
Time off
Competitive holiday entitlement with the potential to buy extra holiday days.
Tags & Focus Areas
About Marks & Spencer
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