Platform Architect

Summary

M&S is leveraging the power of data. We’re using data analytics, data science and artificial intelligence to solve business problems, improve the customer experience, and drive commercial value. This role sits within the M&S Data Architecture & Design team, where we are enhancing our cloud-hosted (Azure) data platform to meet a growing dependency on these capabilities. 

We are looking for an experienced Platform Architect who will work closely with key stakeholders to understand and prioritise key platform capabilities, maintain our data capability framework, and lead the safe evolution of our technical architecture to meet our evolving needs. This includes capabilities for self-serve analytics and insights, data engineering, machine learning, data visualisation, data provisioning services/APls, data catalogue, data quality and data security.

This role will be pivotal in ensuring our data platform evolves to capitalise on new technology opportunities, and to meet the evolving needs of all business areas at M&S (Foods, Clothing & Home Finance, Marketing, Dotcom, Supply Chain, HR, etc). The role will be part of a collaborative Data Technology team, and the successful candidate will also work with owners of our Data Governance and Data Analytics functions, as well as with our colleagues in the wider architecture community at M&S. 

What’s in it for you  

Being a part of M&S is exactly that – playing your part to bring the magic of M&S to our customers every day. We’re an inclusive, dynamic, exciting, and ever evolving business built on doing the right thing and bringing exceptional quality, value, service to every customer, whenever, wherever and however they want to shop with us. 

Here are some of the benefits we offer that make working for M&S just that little bit more special… 

20% colleague discount across all M&S products and many of our third-party brands for you and a member of your household.  Competitive holiday entitlement with the potential to buy extra holiday days!  Discretionary bonus schemes awarded based on how you achieve your personal objectives and our performance as a business.  A generous Defined Contribution Pension Scheme and Life Assurance.  A dedicated welcome to our teams with a tailored induction and a wide range of training programmes to develop your skills.  Amazing perks and discounts via our M&S Choices portal to maximise your financial and personal wellbeing.  Industry-leading parental, adoption and neonatal policies, providing support and flexibility for your family.  Access to a fantastic range of wellbeing support for all colleagues including access to our 24/7 Virtual GP and PAM Assist to support you and your family.  A charity volunteer day to support a charity or cause you're passionate about through a dedicated day away from work. 

What you’ll do  

Your key accountabilities will include 

Provide a structured approach to capturing and prioritising key capabilities for M&S Data Platform  Work with relevant stakeholders to understand their needs, and help them to specify capabilities and evaluation criteria against which existing & potential tooling can be assessed  Provide marketplace assessment of available tools, present options, support proofs of technology, and make tooling recommendations  Apply standard, tool-agnostic considerations (scalability, availability, resilience, portability, security, to support tooling assessments  Interact with M&S enterprise architecture community to ensure data portfolio remains aligned with enterprise decisions and feed into enterprise discussions 

Who you are  

Your skills and experience will include Experience of using a structured approach to tooling assessment & selection  Highly familiar with the capabilities required to provide a secure, scalable, performant, functionally-rich data platform  Understanding of Analytics and Reporting best practices and technologies, understanding of Data Engineering best practices and technologies, understanding of Data Governance best practices and technologies, understanding of enterprise security requirements and techniques, understanding of enterprise application development and software engineering.  Experience of presenting technology proposals (including costs/benefits) to non-technical senior stakeholders 

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.