Software Development Managers (SDMs) establish and sustain the environment for development and delivery operations to exist and succeed. Their primary focus is to hire retain guide and develop our Engineers (SDEs/SEs/SAs etc) through creating and aligning individual’s objectives and development plan alongside the goals of the wider team and business. They evolve the right tailored approaches to manage and develop their Engineers including regular 1-2-1 meetings identifying mentors or mentees and providing impromptu coaching and feedback inputs getting right mentorship to grow expertise etc. SDMs help split the scope of work across one or more Engineers depending on their strengths and areas of improvement.

1. SDE Technology coaching and development

Software Development Managers (SDMs) establish and sustain the environment for development to exist and succeed. Their primary focus is to hire retain and develop our Software Development Engineers (SDEs) through creating and aligning individual’s short- and long-term objectives and development plan alongside the goals of the wider team and business. They evolve the right tailored approaches to manage and develop their SDEs including regular 1-2-1 meetings identifying mentors or mentees and providing impromptu coaching inputs. SDMs help split the scope of work across one or more SDEs depending on their strengths and areas of improvement. They actively work to set the SDEs up for success providing course corrections as necessary. SDMs also help SDEs get the right mentorship to ensure they grow more expertise and to address any weaknesses hindering their effectiveness.

2. Team structure and technology processes
SDMs build effective performing teams that consistently deliver quality software whilst balancing the demands of timeframes and needs. They put in place the ingredients for teams to succeed including the right level of process practices and data gathering to help the team constantly improve. SDMs default to granting teams autonomy but recognise when stronger guidance and help from them is needed. When the team is performing an SDM offers a light-touch to assist in unblocking progress. When a team is struggling the SDM identifies and actions a plan to help.

They build an effective customer engagement process to ensure their teams have awareness of the importance of good customer experience and show responsiveness to customer experience during development as well as in operational issues.

They drive continuous improvement of engineering practises and efficiency of development within their team and foster innovation. They empower their engineers to own technical decisions whilst providing guidance and enforcing best practices. They are hands-on when required but are always aware of their primary focus when doing so.

3. Delivery and stakeholder management
SDMs deliver the right outcomes and collaborate with the appropriate stakeholders and customers whether directly responsible for the functional delivery of a team or working across multiple teams. They build healthy empathetic relationships to arrive at consensus and overcome any conflicts.

Within their operating domain they demonstrate ownership over the relevant areas of work and can also reach out to and execute effectively with peers and other stakeholders when needed to ensure the success of broader more complex outcomes.

SDMs are accountable for the slices they own in a program and proactively identify risks propose mitigations and get them reviewed with their manager stakeholders and customers. They also know when to ask for help or escalate. SDMs are great at spoken and written communication.

4. Technical strategy
SDM is responsible for the development and oversight of the technical roadmap and strategy in order to support growth objectives while strengthening the business core to develop and maintain a competitive advantage.

The SDM plays a key role in formulation of the technical roadmap and strategy collaborates with both internal and external stakeholders and leads cross-functional teams in the development of the roadmap.

There are three outcome expected from SDM as part of Technical Strategy.

• Understand technology landscape and its implication to retail Industry - [White paper or Blog]
• Evaluate prototype and present implementation use cases. [Demos]
• Induce Tesco approved technology change to their respective domains. [Produce compliance reports]

SDM participates in various meet-ups seminars and events to understand technology advancements in the industry and collaborates with the team to develop prototypes. SDM interacts continuously with end users and product managers to keep them current with new possibilities of technology applications and value it brings for our customers. SDM drives architecture design implementation adoption and re-usability of such new technology by sharing their work with peer SDMs and create culture of innovation and technical excellence within the team and at Tesco at broader level.

• Software development experience
• Strong proficiency with JavaScript / TypeScript
• Knowledge of Node.js and frameworks available for it such as React, GraphQL, Apollo
• Understanding the nature of asynchronous programming and its quirks and workarounds
• Understanding of server-side templating languages such as Jade, EJS is a bonus
• Basic understanding of front-end technologies, such as HTML5, and CSS3
• Understanding accessibility and security compliance
• User authentication and authorisation between multiple systems, servers, and environments
• Integration of multiple data sources into one system
• Understanding fundamental design principles / patterns behind a scalable application
• Understanding differences between multiple delivery platforms, such as mobile vs. desktop, and optimizing output to match the specific platform
• Implementing automated testing platforms and unit tests
• Proficient understanding of code versioning tools, such as Git