Waitrose eCommerce Platform & Operations Manager

About the roleIt’s an exciting time in Waitrose. We want to grow into a business that in five years' time generates 70m units per week and £10bn sales a year. Waitrose Online business, currently contributing £1B sales a year, is a key channel for that growth. I am looking for the next member of my Technology leadership team to lead and inspire a highly skilled technical team who are accountable for the end-to-end operations of our Waitrose Online platforms. This role will be accountable for ensuring the Waitrose Online Platform, Digital and Legacy Applications achieve the highest standards of availability, agility, and security in the most cost effective way.

This is a great opportunity to lead a matrix team of brilliant Partners to drive growth and outstanding service for customers.

At a glance

• Expected Salary - £68,500.00 - £128,00.00 (dependent on experience)

• Contract type - This is a permanent contract 

• Working pattern/flexible working - This is a hybrid working role, therefore your time will primarily be split between working from home, the Bracknell Head Office and travelling. However, there will also be an expectation to visit other locations as the need arises. 

Key responsibilities:

Lead a team-of employees ( known as Partners) and third parties to ensure that Waitrose’s critical customer facing websites and apps run smoothly to agreed service levels, with appropriate observability and monitoring.  This includes customer delivery systems used by our shops and fulfilment centres and third parties such as Deliveroo.

Act as an escalation point for Senior IT and Digital Product Leadership for major operational issues, taking a holistic view for all interconnected enterprise-wide services, and remaining calm under pressure.

Empower the team to provide the Waitrose Online “Platform as a Service”, as well as the subject matter expertise, to enable Product teams to launch and scale digital propositions to deliver value faster to customers, whilst maintaining stability.

Manage prioritisation of the teams activities to achieve the most appropriate balance of Operability (e.g. Availability, Resilience, Scalability, Performance, Security), Delivery Velocity, and Cost, and ensure delivery against the Partnership outcomes.

Ensure risks and opportunities of the Online Platform and Online Applications are well managed, making recommendations to IT Senior Leadership and Online Product Leadership and initiating interventions where required.

Lead, coach, develop and recruit a strong, capable and empowered team of Platform and Operability Engineers, ensuring expertise from 3rd parties is used appropriately to ensure the skills in the team remain current.

Essential skills/experience you’ll need:

• Proven track record of operational accountability for mission critical websites and services

• Strong understanding of both DevOps and Agile ways of working e.g. Scrum, Kanban,SAFe 

• Strong understanding of Cloud technologies and microservices architecture, CI and CD

• Extensive experience at managing multi-million pound budgets

• Experience at managing multiple mixed skilled, digital teams onshore and nearshore

• Experience building and developing high performing, cross functional, digital teams

• Proven experience & deep understanding of IT Delivery in a lean and agile environment

• Ability to work with and manage third party vendors in a DevOps Culture

• Have a very strong understanding of commercial IT, digital and modern retail system trends

• Extensive experience in Senior Stakeholder management

• Excellent verbal and written communication.

Desirable skills/experience you may have:

• Experience of FinOps to drive business value from our cloud platform of cloud, enable timely data-driven decision making, and create financial accountability

• Experience leading agile transformation in a medium to large organisation

• Experience in Programme or Portfolio management with a record of successes.

• A background in software engineering and literacy in modern software development

• Certifications - CSM / Lean

About 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. If required, you’ll find out more about vetting throughout the recruitment process and we encourage you to complete any vetting documents quickly to avoid delays.

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.