Staff Software Engineer - Identity - Manchester

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 engineers and 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 team is responsible for the M&S Identity Platform, managing authentication journeys for both customers and colleagues. We sit at a unique intersection, delivering seamless authentication experiences for customers while enabling internal teams to build on a robust Identity Platform.

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 engineers and 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.

About the Role

The M&S Identity team is looking for a Staff 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 our Identity Platform.

The team is responsible for the M&S Identity Platform, managing authentication journeys for both customers and colleagues. We sit at a unique intersection, delivering seamless authentication experiences for customers while enabling internal teams to build on a robust Identity Platform.

In this role, you will play a key part in driving our ambition to create a best-in-class software engineering team, environment, and culture. Join our community of engineers to help build a modern digital ecosystem, work with cutting-edge technologies, and do the best work of your career.

What you'll do

Influence the technical direction of the Identity Platform and shape our long-term architecture. Design solutions that improve the M&S Identity Platform, provides excellent user authentication experience to our customers and great developer experience to our engineers

Lead and contribute to cross-team initiatives from design through deployment and operations

Write maintainable, well-tested, high-quality code and uphold engineering best practices

Focus on observability and maintain Service Level Objectives, take operational responsibility for the Identity Platform, including joining the on-call rota

Foster a strong engineering culture through mentorship, code reviews, and collaboration

Lead by example in producing high-quality documentation, including architecture, design, operational, and technical documentation

Work closely with Product Managers, Designers, and Engineers across M&S to design elegant, scalable solutions

Assist with recruiting and onboarding new engineers.

Who you are

8+ years of experience building and scaling distributed systems, ideally serving millions of users

Deep expertise in one or more JVM-based languages (ideally Kotlin with Micronaut)

Proven experience in DevOps practices, including running and operating what you build

Experience designing CI/CD pipelines and driving improvements in developer productivity

Comfortable working in cloud environments (preferably Azure)

Experience with identity standards like OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect is a strong plus

You balance long-term thinking with pragmatic delivery, and thrive in high-autonomy teams

What’s in it for you

Being a part of M&S is exactly that – becoming a part and playing your part. We’re an inclusive, dynamic, exciting, and always evolving business built on core values.

Here are some of the benefits we offer that make working for M&S just that little bit more special…

20% Colleague discount on most things from furniture, fashion and food.

A first-class welcome to M&S with a tailored induction and a wide range of training schemes to help with your learning and development. Having options to progress is something we’re proud of at M&S.

Attractive annual bonus, based on company performance and personal objectives.

Competitive holiday entitlement with the potential to buy extra holiday days!

Amazing perks and discounts via our M&S Choices website. Including GymSave – that offers up to 25% off Gym Memberships and the option to become an M&S Shareholder using our ShareSave & ShareBuy Schemes

Charity Volunteer Day – A paid day away from work to support your chosen charity.

A very generous Defined Contribution Pension Scheme and Life Assurance

Every colleague at M&S has access to a fantastic range of wellbeing support – this includes access to our 24/7 Virtual GP, PAM Assist to support you & your family as well as many other schemes

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