Head of Software Development

About the role

This is a unique opportunity to play a leading role in how software products are built within a leading global retailer with real impact across millions of customers and thousands of software engineers.

Reporting to the Director of Engineering Effectiveness and Capability, you will lead teams that focus on overall developer experience, developer tooling and will lead our efforts to evolve how software engineering is done in the world of agentic AI. You’ll play a key role in shaping strategy as well as driving execution. You’ll provide thought leadership through keeping your knowledge and expertise in agentic coding up to date through continual evaluation of new technologies and practices and be able to balance pace of delivery with the need to be secure, resilient and prudent. The impact of your work will be felt by over 2,500 software engineers.

You’ll manage and provide leadership to teams based in India and Hungary.

What is in it for you

At Tesco, we are committed to providing the best for you.

As a result, our colleagues enjoy a unique, differentiated, market- competitive reward package, based on the current industry practices, for all the work they put into serving our customers, communities and planet a little better every day.

Our Tesco Rewards framework consists of pillars - Fixed Pay, Incentives, and Benefits.

Total Rewards offered at Tesco is determined by four principles -simple, fair, competitive, and sustainable.

Salary - Your fixed pay is the guaranteed pay as per your contract of employment.

Annual Bonus - Opportunity to earn additional bonus, distributed as 2/3rd in compensation and 1/3rd in shares.

Leave & Time-off - Colleagues are entitled to 30 days of leave (18 days of Earned Leave, 12 days of Casual/Sick Leave) and 10 national and festival holidays, as per the company’s policy.

Making Retirement Tension-FreeSalary - In addition to Statutory retirement beneets, Tesco enables colleagues to participate in voluntary programmes like NPS and VPF.

Health is Wealth - Tesco promotes programmes that support a culture of health and wellness including insurance for colleagues and their family. Our medical insurance provides coverage for dependents including parents or in-laws.

Mental Wellbeing - We offer mental health support through self-help tools, community groups, ally networks, face-to-face counselling, and more for both colleagues and dependents.

Financial Wellbeing - Through our financial literacy partner, we offer one-to-one financial coaching at discounted rates, as well as salary advances on earned wages upon request.

Save As You Earn (SAYE) - Our SAYE programme allows colleagues to transition from being employees to Tesco shareholders through a structured 3-year savings plan.

Physical Wellbeing - Our green campus promotes physical wellbeing with facilities that include a cricket pitch, football field, badminton and volleyball courts, along with indoor games, encouraging a healthier lifestyle.

You will be responsible for

• Budget ownership, partnership and commercial relationships with existing suppliers in the developer tooling and agentic coding space. Continual evaluation of new tools and build vs buy decisions.
• The ongoing evolution and operational excellence of our key developer tools such as GitHub, SonarQube Nexus and others that support software development activities.
• Key input into the definition and continual evolution of the strategy for how our SDLC evolves in the light of Agentic AI.
• Accountability and leadership to execute how agentic AI is enabled for development teams.
• Thought leadership across the whole Technology organisation around Agentic AI for coding and other aspects of the SDLC.
• Overall ownership of developer experience including gathering quantitative and qualitative data, driving insight and identifying areas of opportunity.

You will need

• Proven experience of leading geographically disparate teams and managing managers.
• Ability to shape strategic direction; deal with ambiguity and operate autonomously in a fast-evolving space making timely decisions without perfect data and be able to operate in an intent-based way vs seeking approval.
• Strong ability to make decisions that balance multiple, often conflicting factors.
• Excellent communication and influencing skills downwards, across and upwards.
• Proven experience in managing significant vendor relationships, evaluating offerings and working effectively with procurement and legal teams.
• Strong understanding of budgets, forecasts and the economics of software development activity and agentic AI.
• Experience of working in an organisation that values product-led and data-led problem definition and discovery.
• A solid understanding of all aspects of a typical SDLC and opinions on where AI can have the biggest impact.
• Prior experience as a hands-on software engineer which allows you to have a strong understanding and empathy of engineers’ needs and views.
• Experience in leading teams who ‘run what they build’, managing effective operational support and on-call engineers.
• Ideally: prior experience of working in a developer experience, platform engineering or similar role.

Skills:

• You are naturally curious and have built up expertise with agentic coding tools such as Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode or Cursor but you have a bias towards solving problems not dogmatic solutions.
• Ability to keep knowledge up to date through effective building of networks, data sources and ability to identify and distil key trends and directions and then apply context to how you interpret them.
• Strong system design and architecture skills and instincts.
• Exceptional people management skills including how to manage talent and performance and grow the people around you.

About us

At Tesco, inclusion is at the heart of everything we do. We believe in treating everyone fairly and with respect, valuing individuality and uniqueness to create a true sense of belonging. Diversity and inclusion are deeply embedded in our values-we treat people how they want to be treated. Our goal is for all colleagues to feel they can be themselves at work, and we are committed to helping them thrive. Across the Tesco group, we are building an inclusive workplace that actively celebrates the cultures, personalities, and preferences of our colleagues, who in turn contribute to the success of our business and reflect the diversity of the communities we serve.

At Tesco Bengaluru, we are proud to be a Disability Confident Committed Employer, highlighting our commitment to creating a supportive environment for individuals with disabilities. We are dedicated to offering equal opportunities for all candidates and encourage applicants with disabilities to apply. Our recruitment process is fully accessible, and we are happy to provide reasonable adjustments during interviews. If you need any accommodations to participate in the recruitment process, please let us know. We are here to ensure that everyone has the chance to succeed.

We also believe in fostering a work environment where you can excel both professionally and personally. Our hybrid model allows you to work flexibly-spend 60% of your week collaborating in person with colleagues at our office locations or local sites, and the rest of the time working remotely. We understand that everyone’s life journey is unique, whether you are starting your career, pursuing passions, or navigating life changes, and we are here to support you. Flexibility is a core part of our culture, and we encourage open conversations about how we can best accommodate your needs, so talk to us throughout your application process on the support required.