Principal Software Development Engineer

About the role As a Principal Software Development Engineer, you are key in shaping large parts of Tesco’s technical landscape. You contribute to strategic planning, combining business vision and industry best practices to define technical strategy and make decisions. You typically work across multiple teams, setting standards for engineering excellence and efficient technical design. You are hands-on and guide teams to improve technology across product portfolios, infrastructure, and processes. As a senior technical expert, you are a thought leader for large and complex areas. You set technical direction to translate strategy into action, making a significant impact to the organisation. You own the design, implementation, and delivery of software that shapes products and technologies. You use your depth of skill and experience to enable multiple teams around you to deliver excellent software quickly. 

You will be responsible for My impact is across the directorate that I am a member of, but also reaches beyond to effect change across the wider organisation. I solve problems and deliver solutions that impact the whole engineering organisation. I would generally expect to be given a very high-level problem to work on, but everything after that is me: identifying and formalising the problem, converting it into a simple technical solution, leading its implementation, and training the rest of the organisation to use it.

As a senior technical authority, I deliver value that materially changes outcomes for the company, and my job is not just about my technical judgement but also my ability to influence others to deliver results. I am an authority on multiple technologies and in multiple domains; senior engineers from other teams come to me for advice on the architecture of their products. I am a proponent of an effective engineering community that encourages learning for all.

I guide large complex programmes of work, working with and influencing the engineering, product, programme, and business teams. In doing so I influence build vs buy decisions, deprecate legacy software, and lead significant refactoring. I make the right trade-offs to influence the roadmap and sequencing of work to deliver early and often. I am hands on with design and coding to resolve hard problems that have a long-term impact.

I guide one or more areas and define the strategic design keeping security, scalability, extensibility, and reusability in mind. I drive Tesco’s Inner Source Platform, maintaining and contributing to projects whilst influencing direction and adoption. I have strong communication and influencing skills to resolve disputes and to lead stakeholders to appropriate decisions with data points and foresight. I have sufficient breadth and depth of technical knowledge to influence senior leaders on engineering strategy. I build strategy documents, designs and code which are exemplary and serve as a model for others. I write

critical path code, having a good appreciation of the whole stack. I innovate and stay ahead of industry trends, competition, and new paradigms and share appropriately. I routinely come up with PoCs to evaluate approaches or technology choices to enable or accelerate programmes.

You will need Key people and teams I work with in and outside of Tesco: Product Managers Engineers Technical Programme Managers Members from wider engineering community

**People, budgets and other resources I am accountable

for in my job:** No direct line management responsibility

Operational skills relevant for this job: Programming System Design Development Practise Infrastructure Software Security Operations and Maintenance Core Technology Development Lifecycle Product Methodologies Retail Technology Awareness Communication & InfluencingData Analytics & Insights Strategic Thinking & Problem Solving Finance & Procurement Curiosity & Learning Embracing and Enabling Change    

Experience relevant for this job: S uccessfully had across large engineering organisations.Demonstrated experience designing, developing and running whole system landscapes.Experience acting as a technical authority across multiple domains and multiple technologiesExperience proposing architectural patterns for adoption by an organisation.Experience guiding large programmes of work.Experience driving the adoption of inner sourcing initiatives.

Whats in it for you?

At Tesco, we are committed…