Head of Software Engineering - HR

As Head of Software Engineering – Corporate HR, you will lead the engineering teams responsible for a broad and integration-heavy HR technology estate that supports the full colleague lifecycle at M&S, from recruitment through to payroll, reward, learning and workforce management.

You will be accountable for the engineering strategy, quality, reliability and operability of a landscape built around key enterprise platforms including Oracle PeopleSoft, SD Worx, Oleeo and Totara, with a large number of supporting specialist systems and third-party services across recruitment, colleague interaction, reward and wellbeing, learning, analytics, payroll and workforce management.

A major part of the role is managing the many integrations and data flows between these platforms and wider M&S systems, including finance, identity, access, reporting and external partners. This is not a single-platform role. It requires strong leadership across a distributed estate with many vendors, interfaces, dependencies and operational hand-offs.

You will lead 4–5 Engineering Managers and partner closely with HR, Product, Technical Programme Management, Architecture, Security and central platform teams to simplify the estate, improve service quality, and ensure critical colleague services work reliably end to end.

What You'll Do

• Set the engineering strategy and technical direction for Corporate HR, aligned to Central Tech and the wider engineering organisation.
• Lead and develop 4–5 Engineering Managers and support strong software engineering and Software Development Engineer in Test teams.
• Oversee the engineering health of the core HR technology estate, including:
  • Oracle PeopleSoft for workforce record administration, compensation, learning and core HR processes
  • SD Worx for payroll
  • JDA for workforce management
  • Totara for learning management
  • Oleeo for applicant tracking and recruitment workflows
• Provide engineering leadership across a wide set of integrated specialist platforms, including systems such as:
  • Avature, Criterion, TalentBrew, Invenias, HireVue, SAP Fieldglass, 10x and Rare in recruitment
  • Oracle HelpDesk / CRM and Anana in colleague interaction
  • PAM Group, Gallagher, Capita, Legal & General, Reward Gateway, Salary Finance, Equiniti, Zenith and Terryberry in reward and wellbeing
  • SAP WPB, GoodPractice and Guider in learning and development
  • OASIS, OrgVue, Oracle Business Intelligence, ETS and Hallmark PAMS across document management, organisation modelling, analytics and colleague services
• Be accountable for the large number of integrations, interfaces and data exchanges across this estate, including flows between HR, payroll, workforce management, identity and access management, finance, reporting and third-party providers.
• Ensure systems and integrations are secure, reliable, observable and supportable, with clear ownership, support models, runbooks and service measures.
• Drive strong engineering practices across architecture, documentation, testing, continuous integration and continuous delivery, production operations, incident management and service ownership.
• Simplify legacy technology, reduce unnecessary complexity and manage technical debt across a multi-vendor environment.
• Shape pragmatic target architectures, including improved application programming interface and event-driven integration patterns where they are the right fit.
• Work closely with stakeholders across HR and Technology to shape roadmaps, prioritise risk, and make technical trade-offs visible.

Who You Are

• Experience leading multiple engineering teams through managers in a complex software environment.
• A strong track record of improving engineering quality, service reliability and delivery performance across business-critical systems.
• Significant experience managing integration-heavy estates with many third-party platforms, suppliers, interfaces and operational dependencies.
• Strong knowledge of application programming interfaces, middleware, event-driven architecture, third-party SaaS platforms, vendor management and production support models.
• Experience working in HR, payroll, workforce management, finance or other corporate platform domains is valuable.
• A leadership style that values clarity, simplicity, ownership and high engineering standards.

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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