Head of Loyalty, Strategy & Proposition

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Job Description

Please note this role is a fixed term contract covering maternity

What's in it for you

Working at M&S means being part of something bigger - helping to deliver quality, value and service to millions of customers every day. We're inclusive, fast-moving and always evolving, with a strong sense of purpose and a focus on doing the right thing.

Here are just a few of the benefits that make working here even more rewarding:

• 20% colleague discount on all M&S products and many third-party brands for you and someone in your household, available once you've completed your probation
• Competitive holiday allowance with the option to buy more
• Discretionary bonus schemes linked to your performance and ours
• Strong pension and life assurance to help plan for the future
• Tailored induction and training to support your development from day one
• Exclusive perks and savings through our M&S Choices portal
• Market-leading family policies, including parental, adoption and neonatal leave
• 24/7 wellbeing support, including virtual GP access and mental health services
• One paid volunteer day a year to support a cause that matters to you

What you'll do

The Head of Loyalty Strategy & Proposition is responsible for defining, evolving, and leading the strategic direction of the Sparks loyalty programme. This role owns the multiyear roadmap, customer value proposition and strategic decision frameworks that ensure Sparks remains market leading, differentiated, and commercially effective.

They lead the development of the core loyalty proposition across rewards, personalisation, digital experience, clubs, partnerships, and omnichannel journeys - grounded in deep customer insight, competitive benchmarking, behavioural data, and commercial rigour.

The role shapes and governs prioritisation across Loyalty, ensuring clarity on what we build, why it matters, and how it delivers for customers, for the M&S brand, and for the business. It also leads strategic partnership development. Finally, as we expand our M&S global footprint, it will increasingly work closely with International teams to shape the global roadmap and ensure Sparks is scalable beyond the UK.

A passion for the M&S brand, its products, and doing what is right for customers is vital - ensuring the proposition reflects the heart of M&S and creates value customers truly feel.

• Define the strategic direction for Sparks across customer, commercial, and brand objectives. Own the loyalty roadmap, working closely with Product - shaping what we build, sequencing priorities, and ensuring all investment decisions are customer led and commercially grounded. Establishing the frameworks, criteria, and governance that underpin prioritisation.
• Develop new propositions from initial customer insight / challenge through to launch, working closely with Sparks business and D&T teams to ensure smooth delivery and long-term success of new propositions. Ensuring the proposition reflects M&S brand values - trusted quality, product passion, value.
• Define the partner strategy for Sparks - identifying, evaluating, and shaping partnerships that enhance loyalty value and emotional connection.
• Manage Sparks partnerships from contract through to execution and ongoing relationship management. Establishing viable loyalty partnerships operating model for M&S and scale in line with results over time.
• Partner with M&S International to define and evolve the Sparks global strategy. Shaping the international loyalty proposition and ensure alignment with the UK roadmap while allowing for appropriate flexibility.
• Partner with Finance to develop business cases, model commercial outcomes, and assess customer value. Ensuring all propositions are commercially viable, brand enhancing, and customer positive.
• Work closely with Product, Engineering and Data Science to define customer first product requirements. Prioritising features and capabilities that enable long term loyalty growth.
• Inspire teams around the future vision of Sparks.

Who you are

You are a strategic thinker with deep loyalty, customer insight or customer growth experience. You combine analytical rigour with creativity, commercial judgement, and strong narrative skills. You are passionate about the M&S brand, its products, and doing the right thing for customers - committed to creating rewarding and effortless experiences that customers genuinely feel. You thrive on shaping long term strategy, influencing senior stakeholders, and turning complex insight into simple, actionable direction.

• Strong loyalty & proposition leadership: Proven experience shaping loyalty strategy or customer propositions at scale.
• Customer centric & insight driven mindset: Ability to unlock insight from data, research and behaviour - and turn it into strategy. Outstanding strategic thinking & prioritisation: Comfortable shaping direction amid ambiguity and making clear choices on what matters most.
• Commercial acumen: Strong capability in business case development and commercial impact assessment.
• Exceptional storytelling & communication: Able to craft compelling strategic narratives for ExCo, senior forums and cross functional stakeholders.
• Partner strategy & ecosystem development: Experience identifying, negotiating, and shaping partnership value exchanges.
• Cross functional leadership: Effective at influencing Product, Engineering, Delivery, Marketing, Retail, Finance, Analytics and International teams.
• Digital & product fluency: Understanding of digital product development, loyalty technologies, and personalisation capabilities.
• Brand passion: A deep personal connection to the M&S brand, its products, and its customers.

Everyone's Welcome

We are ambitious about the future of retail. We're disrupting, innovating and leading the industry into a more conscientious, inspiring digital era. We're transforming how we work together and offering our most exciting opportunities yet. Marks & Spencer strives to be an inclusive organisation, trusted and admired by our colleagues, customers and suppliers. Join us and make change happen.

We are committed to building diverse and representative teams, where everyone can bring their whole selves to work and be at their best. We support each other and work together to win together.

If you feel you'd benefit from any support or reasonable adjustments during any stage of the recruitment process, please don't hesitate to let us know when completing your application. This information will be picked up by our team, so we can try and put steps in place to help you be at your best through this process.

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About Us

M&S is ready to push boundaries to lead the industry into a greener, speedier, more inspiring digital era. That's why we're revolutionising how we work and offering our most exciting opportunities yet. There's never been a better time to be part of our team.

Marks & Spencer aims to be an inclusive organisation, trusted and admired by our colleagues, customers and suppliers. Join us and make an immediate impact. We are committed to an active Inclusion, Diversity and Equal Opportunities Policy, which starts with our recruitment and selection process and we are happy to talk smart/flexible working.

About the Team

From Merchandising and Marketing - Product Development and Design, through to Supply Chain and Space Planning - our mission is to bring stylish wardrobe, home and beauty essentials to our customers via an easy, inspiring shopping experience online and in store that will delight them every time.

As we accelerate the transformation of our business to suit the changing needs of our customer, we need results-driven colleagues that not only have a passion for our product, but a strong team working ethos, creativity and a healthy commercial drive to join us on our journey.