Work/life balance. Interesting projects. And a reputable brand. Those are the top three things I look for in an employer. In my experience, you might get one or two of those elements, but there’s usually a compromise you’ll have to make. But there’s an equal marriage of all three here and the empowering culture is the icing on the cake. Tesco offers everything I want in a workplace.

I first joined in 2013 as the Head of Architecture in E-commerce, and five years later, I left for an opportunity at a different company to build a department from scratch. I learnt a lot, but I missed it here and hoped to return one day. Fast forward three years, and I’m back as Head of Software Development in the Customer Service Engineering team.

My team is transforming the technology landscape for our customer engagement centres. Not too long ago, when someone called a Tesco call centre, our colleagues would have to flip through a dozen applications to answer a query. For example, they’d need different applications to authenticate a customer, review their history, raise a complaint and then trigger a refund. Not only would this take time, but this would also expose inconsistencies in our customers’ information across systems.

In the past two years, we’ve started eliminating those systems one by one and built a strategic tool, which is a one-stop shop for our call centre colleagues in Dundee, Scotland. Our main aim is to provide the capabilities that will improve our customers’ experience. We’re not quite there yet, but nearly 80% of queries are now handled via one application, and by the end of 2023, we’d like that figure to be at 90%. Once we’ve achieved that in the UK, we’ll begin rolling out to Central Europe too. We have also been transforming customer service applications used in the stores and self-service applications used by our online customers. We innovate with cutting edge technologies to continuously enhance the customer experience.

I work alongside the Head of Product, Head of Programme, and various colleagues from our customer service department to develop a product roadmap, as well as ensuring all dependencies align. As Tesco is such a large organisation, eliminating these systems is complex – particularly because we work with a lot of legacy landscapes. So I’m heavily involved in mapping out the future and creating high-level plans. I work with lots of different teams to make sure we have clean architecture in place, and whatever we do conforms with our technology direction and best practice.

Everything we develop is on a massive scale – that’s exciting. But a standout project I was part of was enabling authentication in the self-service ‘chatbot’ for social media. The chatbot was built so customers could get answers to common questions and resolve smaller issues, preventing them from having to call our customer engagement centres. We enabled customer authentication so that the applications could answer specific questions about the customer. The project involved a lot of research and internal conversations about how to provide the best experience and to make sure our customers’ security was maintained. It was a great accomplishment and the first of its kind ­– it had never been done in retail before.

I enjoy loads of aspects of my role. The people I work with, working on end-to-end projects, the impact we have. But I also really value the opportunity to play a bigger role in recruiting technologists. Tesco wants to hire bar raisers in tech. And I get to be part of that. I’ve been involved in creating global toolkits that lay out the structure of interviews, the topics we cover, and the expectations we have of candidates. Being able to make a difference across all tech teams makes my job even more fulfilling.

We’re innovating constantly at Tesco, and this gives you the opportunity to develop at pace. Whether you’re working on a specific project or you’re focused on your day-to-day responsibilities, you’ll have huge impact. Plus, you’ll be working with the latest and greatest technologies and the best-in-class technologists. All this comes with a great non-hierarchical culture that embraces innovation. So, if you want to grow as an engineer, there’s no better place than Tesco.”