Software Development Manager

About the role

Search is one of the most critical customer-facing capabilities at Tesco, powering the discovery of millions of products across our digital ecosystem. We are on a journey to transform traditional keyword-based search into an intelligent, AI-driven discovery platform that delivers highly relevant, personalized, and conversational experiences for our customers.

As part of the Search & Discovery team, you will lead a high-performing group of engineers building and operating large-scale search systems that serve millions of customer interactions daily. Our platform combines traditional information retrieval techniques with cutting-edge machine learning, semantic search, hybrid retrieval, ranking optimization, and conversational AI experiences.

You will work at the intersection of distributed systems, search relevance, machine learning, and customer experience, helping shape the future of how customers discover products across Tesco.

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.
• 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

As a Software Development Manager within the Search & Discovery organization, your primary responsibility will be to build and lead a highly engaged team of search engineers while delivering world-class search experiences for Tesco customers.

You will balance people leadership, technical strategy, and delivery execution, helping the team solve complex problems spanning retrieval, ranking, relevance, personalization, and AI-powered search capabilities.

People Leadership

• Build, coach, and develop a team of talented software engineers and senior engineers.
• Create a culture of ownership, innovation, inclusion, and continuous learning.
• Support career growth through mentoring, coaching, regular feedback, and development planning.
• Drive high standards of engineering excellence, accountability, and quality.
• Actively participate in hiring and help build diverse, high-performing engineering teams.

Technical Leadership

• Partner with Principal Engineers, Product Managers, and Data Scientists to define and execute the Search technology strategy.
• Guide architectural decisions across search, retrieval, ranking, indexing, and AI-driven discovery systems.
• Drive adoption of modern search technologies including semantic retrieval, vector search, hybrid ranking, and conversational AI capabilities.
• Stay close to the technology and provide technical guidance without becoming a bottleneck.
• Champion engineering best practices around scalability, resilience, observability, security, and performance.

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Experience Relevant for the Role

• Proven experience managing software engineering teams delivering complex distributed systems in production environments.
• Strong experience leading backend engineering teams working with Java-based technology stacks.
• Hands-on experience building and operating large-scale search platforms using Elasticsearch or similar search technologies.
• Experience delivering highly scalable and resilient customer-facing services.
• Experience working in Agile product development environments.
• Experience partnering with Product Management and senior stakeholders to define priorities and roadmaps.
• Experience managing globally distributed engineering teams is desirable.
• Exposure to machine learning, information retrieval, ranking systems, recommendation systems, or applied AI is advantageous.

You will need

Technical Skills

Search & Discovery

• Deep understanding of modern search architectures and information retrieval concepts.
• Experience with Elasticsearch indexing, querying, relevance tuning, and performance optimization.
• Knowledge of semantic search, vector embeddings, hybrid retrieval, and ranking systems.
• Familiarity with search quality metrics, experimentation frameworks, and relevance evaluation techniques.
• Understanding of conversational search, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and AI-powered discovery systems is highly desirable.

Software Engineering

• Strong foundation in Java and distributed systems design.
• Experience with cloud-native architectures and microservices.
• Experience with event-driven architectures and messaging systems such as Kafka.
• Strong understanding of performance, scalability, reliability, and operational excellence.
• Experience with observability, incident management, and production support.

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.

When you join Tesco Bengaluru in this role, you'll be employed by Tesco Bengaluru Private Limited, the Tesco legal entity responsible for your employment.

Our technology landscape includes

• Java, Spring Boot, Reactive Architectures
• Elasticsearch
• Vector Search and Embedding-based Retrieval
• Semantic Search and Hybrid Search Architectures
• Conversational Search and AI-powered Discovery Experiences
• Kafka and Event-Driven Systems
• Couchbase
• Docker, Kubernetes
• Azure Cloud Platform
• CI/CD using Azure DevOps and Jenkins
• Observability using Splunk and New Relic

We own our products end-to-end, from architecture and development through production operations, reliability, performance, and continuous improvement. We embrace DevOps principles and engineering excellence to deliver resilient, scalable, and customer-focused solutions.