Janak

I lead a group of Engineers working on the mobile app, which is a big revenue generator for us. It’s fascinating from an engineering perspective because the problems we solve are about people as much as technology.

And we’re doing great things with the technology. We’re working on an augmented reality tool that lets you try on a new pair of shoes without leaving your living room. And we even have a complete digital experience that takes your size, shape and tastes and then serves up wardrobe suggestions – just like a personal shopper.

In everything we do, we have a Closer to Customers mindset – a way of thinking that encourages us to constantly seek feedback from our customers on what they like about our tech. When you build solutions and experiences around the customer, it sets up a different role for the engineer. 

In many companies, tech people are treated as code-crunching assets, doing endless fixes and patches. At M&S, we are supported to create flexible, scalable development platforms, so we have a solid base for continuing innovation. The engineering voice is heard and valued – and that changes the culture. 

Many of the big banks and corporations you think might be high-tech are really trapped by a legacy of old languages, tools and code. Our attitude is more like a start-up – dynamic and agile. We’re bringing in great talent and we’re investing in new technologies. The Web team have recently rebuilt our entire front-end with Next.js, which is the JavaScript library UI framework that a lot of startups are using. And this solid foundation means that we can build new features faster for our customers.

When I was making software for hedge funds, people were always a bit ‘so-what?’ about it. But M&S is a household name, people love the app, and they want to talk about it. When I joined, my wife said, “You ought to build a wish list on the app so I can add things I want to buy later.” Twelve weeks later, there it was: we’d done it.