Head of Software Development - Recommendation & Personalisation APIs

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This is a great opportunity to play a leading role in the service of millions of Tesco Online and Stores.

The Recommendation domain and Personalisation domain contains a set of critical strategic APIs that allow us to understand our customers, lead how we interact with them, and deliver better, more personalised experiences. Some of the core APIs include:

• Recommendation API: The Product Recommendation APIs provide suggestions to support upselling and cross selling of goods which will be based on such things as:
• Customers also bought, crowd sourced Recommendations, customer preferences, campaigns and offers.
• Product affinity, an approach made popular by Amazon, identifies items to present to a visitor based upon models such as, “visitors who viewed this bought that” or “visitors who bought this also bought that.”.
• Personalisation API: This system provides ranking capabilities to personalised content using different machine learning strategies. The system is designed to personalised different user experiences to provide the most relevant results when a customer search for groceries, or we want to personalise the content of carousels through the checkout journey.
• User Interaction Service API: This service allows us to have granular access and control over user interaction data. Allowing us to understand how our user interfaces are performing and whether they serve customers or colleagues as required. Identifying and sizing areas for improvement then measuring the resultant AB tests. Providing real-time connectivity for systems to measure performance.

We operate a data-led, agile product-based approach – balancing the delivery of daring change with our dedication to the highest possible standards of security, availability, and performance.

As a Head of Software Development at Tesco, you will be responsible for the engineering teams that build, run and support Recommendation & Personalisation APIs, and of course for the engineering qualities of the products within. You will have a team of around 35 people split across the UK and India. You will also have opportunities to supply more widely across Tesco Technology as a senior engineering leader.

Role Responsibilities:

• Cultivate an open, believing culture based on empowerment and continuous incremental improvement
• Define and drive a clear technical strategy for API solutions, working in close collaboration with Product Management
• Contribute to high-level trade-off discussions and roadmap prioritisation
• Mentor and grow the capabilities of our engineers, leading by example
• Take accountability for non-functional outcomes including security, performance, availability, and reliability. Our engineering teams operate with a DevOps approach, running what they build. This includes in and out-of-hours support.
• Work across Tesco Technology on wider technical initiatives and strategy.
• Drive continuous improvement in our technology, processes and ways of working
• Own the overall budget for the teams

• Experience leading, growing, and developing a distributed team of 30+, including leading managers.
• Consistent record of delivering impactful change.
• Deep knowledge and experience working across the full SDLC in an Agile / DevOps culture.
• Experience working in close partnership with product colleagues.
• Significant experience building and operating distributed software solutions at scale.
• Broad hands-on technology background - including practical expertise in API development, testing, Cloud infrastructure, databases (SQL and no-SQL), continuous deployment and operational tooling.
• Experience running PII data and/or working in secure/regulated environments (desirable).

Hiring Manager: Vishal Srivastava 

Recruiter: Lauren Baker

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• Annual bonus scheme of up to 45% of base salary
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• Buy holiday salary sacrifice scheme (for salaried roles)
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• 26 weeks maternity and adoption leave (after 1 years’ service) at full pay, followed by 13 weeks of Statutory Maternity Pay or Statutory Adoption Pay, we also offer 4 weeks fully paid paternity leave
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