Tesco UK • London EC1R 5AR

Software Development Engineer II (Java)

About this role

Tesco’s Lists and Substitutions Team sits at the heart of the Product Discovery space, powering features like your Favourites, Usuals, and the Substitution Carousel across tesco.com and our mobile apps. If you’ve shopped with us, you’ve already used our services.

We’re looking for a Software Development Engineer II to join our collaborative, self-organising team. You’ll contribute to the design and development of high-performance APIs that deliver rich, personalised shopping experiences to millions of customers. This is an excellent opportunity to grow your backend engineering skills, gain hands-on experience with modern technologies, and contribute to real-world systems that operate at scale.

• Developing features for backend APIs using Java and Spring Boot

• Pairing with more senior engineers to design, implement, test, and ship code

• Learning to use observability tools like New Relic and Splunk to monitor live systems

• Participating in planning sessions and team discussions to understand requirements and contribute ideas

• Writing unit and integration tests to ensure code correctness and maintainability

• Collaborating with team members to review code and improve development practices

• Developing an understanding of distributed systems and performance optimisation

• Learning how to use Kubernetes and cloud platforms like Azure to deploy and manage services

• A working knowledge of Java and an interest in backend development

• Familiarity with object-oriented programming principles

• Some practical experience building APIs or working with RESTful services

• A willingness to learn and collaborate in a team environment

• Good communication skills and the ability to ask questions, seek feedback, and share what you’re learning

Nice to have

• Exposure to Spring Boot, NoSQL databases, or cloud services (e.g., Azure, AWS)

• Curiosity about performance, scalability, and observability in large-scale systems

• Familiarity with Git, CI/CD pipelines, or containerisation (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes)

Our vision at Tesco is to become every customer's favourite way to shop, whether they are at home or out on the move. Our core purpose is ‘Serving our customers, communities and planet a little better every day’. Serving means more than a transactional relationship with our customers. It means acting as a responsible and sustainable business for all stakeholders, for the communities we are part of and for the planet.

We are proud to have an inclusive culture at Tesco where everyone truly feels able to be themselves. At Tesco, we not only celebrate diversity, but recognise the value and opportunity it brings. We're committed to creating a workplace where differences are valued, and make sure that all colleagues are given the same opportunities. We’re proud to have been accredited Disability Confident Leader and we’re committed to providing a fully inclusive and accessible recruitment process. For further information on the accessibility support we can offer, please click here.

We’re a big business and we can offer a range of diverse full-time & part-time working patterns across our many business areas, which means that we can find something that works for you. We work in a more blended pattern - combining office and remote working. Our offices will continue to be where we connect, collaborate and innovate. If you are applying internally, please speak to the Hiring Manager about how this can work for you - Everyone is welcome at Tesco.