Product Engineer (John Lewis Commercial)

About the role

The Partnership is the UK’s most successful omni-channel retailer which includes two of the UKs most loved department store and grocery brands with annual sales revenues in excess of £12B.

Our Engineering practice includes 80+ teams, working on everything from Cloud Platforms to Mobile Apps, from E-Commerce functionality to Machine Learning.

Our Engineers work collaboratively and share knowledge, and learning is extremely important to us. We support our Engineers to continuously improve their skills and keep abreast of the latest technologies.

John Lewis Commercial is responsible for ensuring that John Lewis have the right products to sell, at the right price across all John Lewis sales channels. It is also responsible for making sure the business has enough stock for customers in the place they want it, across our omnichannel business

The technology supporting John Lewis Commercial is a blend of commercially available third-party platforms, bespoke in-house systems, and tightly coupled mainframe legacy applications, all interconnected through integrations with other areas of the business. These systems must not only be highly resilient but also adaptable, enabling us to enhance operational efficiency and respond to evolving business needs.

Find out more about being a Software Engineer in the Partnership, and the technology we use.

At a glance

• Contract type - This position is a permanent contract.

• Salary - £75,000 - £140,000

• Flexible Working: This is a hybrid working role, therefore your time will primarily be split between working from home (in the UK) and London Head Office. However, there will also be an expectation to visit other locations as the need arises.

• While most engineers visit the office once or twice a month, occasionally business needs may require more frequent attendance. Our offices are open five days a week for those who prefer to work from the office more regularly.

Key Responsibilities:

• As a Principal Engineer, you will play a pivotal role in aligning the engineering strategy and roadmap for the John Lewis Commercial with the overarching business objectives. Your influence will extend to key decisions that shape the operation of John Lewis Commercial systems and guide how engineering drives change across this complex business area. This will involve influencing how work is managed—whether agile, waterfall, or hybrid— including the effectiveness and measurement of teams. This includes ensuring that engineering practices align with the broader Partnership engineering strategy and influencing team structure, balance, and resource models by providing key input on ways of working and team maturity to deliver optimal engineering capabilities.

• A key objective of the role is to modernise and simplify a complex heritage tech stack to enable both business agility and productivity, as well as improve system maintainability. Foundational to this will be helping to establish Product ways of working.

• To do this you will collaborate closely with key stakeholders such as Product Leads, Delivery and Operations Managers, Infrastructure Leads and Enterprise Architects as well as Senior Staff Engineers and specialist engineering teams. You will also work closely with other Principal Engineers who may be responsible for other business areas or for deep engineering specialisms such as cloud or data.

• Successful candidates will have a passion for using technology to deliver outstanding and innovative software solutions, and will have a track record of working with teams delivering complex, performant, high quality software.

Essential skills/experience you’ll need:

• Strong engineering background with real world experience of modern software engineering techniques such as Continuous Delivery and ideally experience of using strategic patterns of Domain Driven Design.

• Experience of the technical implementation of package solutions into large complex environments with a mix of modern and heritage technology.

• Experience in senior leadership role, leading across multiple teams, working with senior stakeholders and influencing multi-million pound investments in engineering

• Knowledge/experience of working with different architectural styles (e.g. monolith, service based, microservices) and integration patterns when working with different platforms (broker models, RESTful, streams, event based).

• Knowledge/experience of techniques used to increase resilience and/or scalability of systems.

• Experience of applying techniques from Lean and Systems Thinking.

Desirable skills/experience you may have

• Retail experience

• Will have been a hands-on software engineer for part of their career.

• Engineering management role, working across multiple teams or architecture role working across a large part of an enterprise.

Next Steps

• The application form consists of a CV upload followed by application questions. Please ensure you refresh the page each time you complete a task to ensure you complete everything that you need to do before the closing date.

• If you are successful following your initial application, the next stages are: a screening interview followed by a formal interview and up to 2 informal interviews. 

• You'll be asked about any adjustments you might need to support the recruitment process. Let us know, and we'll be sure to discuss it with you.

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The Partnership

We’re the largest employee owned business in the UK and home of our cherished brands, John Lewis and Waitrose. We’re not just employees, we’re Partners, driven by our purpose to build a happier world. As we look to our future, there’s never been a more exciting time to join us.  

We’re ruthlessly focused on being brilliant at retail. We continue to innovate, adapt and diversify. Never Knowingly Undersold on price, quality and service in John Lewis and passionately serving food-lovers in Waitrose.   

As Partners we all share the responsibility of ownership and in its rewards. We use our voices to contribute to our success, working together through the good and challenging times, holding true to our behaviours and treating everyone with kindness and respect. 

We all own making the Partnership somewhere we belong. Embracing our differences and creating an environment where we’re free to be ourselves and can THRIVE. Growing ourselves individually, and as a collective. 

As Partners, we make all the difference. And, we all own it.  

Important points to note:  

It’s important to note that some of our roles are subject to pre-employment vetting (which may include DBS checks for successful candidates). If required, you’ll be informed and provided with information about vetting during the recruitment process and we encourage you to complete any vetting documents quickly to avoid delays. Any DBS checks required will be carried out by a third-party registered body and financial probity checks may also be required for some of our roles.  

We also recommend that you apply as soon as possible as vacancies can close early if we see a high number of applicants.  

We want all of our Partners to have a good work-life balance and we support flexible working. This might mean flexible or compressed hours, job sharing or shorter hour contracts, where possible. Please discuss this further with the hiring manager during your interview.