As a Software Development Engineer 3 you are in a senior Individual Contributor engineering role at Tesco. Your proficiency with foundational computer science and software engineering concepts is taken as a given, and you will have proven significant technical depth and breadth. At this level you will be playing an active role in technical leadership, with proven impact across teams and the wider directorate. You take ownership and accountability of the development of the products in your domain. You participate in activities that build capability across the organisation: coaching and mentoring of existing colleagues, and interviewing/hiring of new colleagues. Once you have reached the SDE3 level, progression will vary significantly, and is likely to include more lateral opportunities than vertical promotion. This is also the level of core technical knowledge you must reach before considering a sideways move to the management track.

My impact reaches beyond my immediate team, and I provide perspective and context for technology choices across my directorate. The work that I do has foundational impact across teams in my area and the directorate that I am a member of. I am a technical leader for my teams and others will regularly come to me for mentorship and support. I am comfortable both supporting other engineers in their delivery and taking the lead on key features as appropriate. I have delivered multiple projects that move the needle for the business. I have demonstrated technical breadth and depth; I am an expert in my domain. At this level I display a high degree of ownership for the work conducted by the team. I am accountable for the quality of every result, produced by individuals and teams. I am an advocate of best practices across my directorate. I build maturity in the way we develop, deliver and operate services. I ensure that we’re learning from the best in the industry, designing and implementing appropriate testing and deployment strategies. I can anticipate feature evolution of my product. I utilise this when facilitating design sessions to ensure that the system architecture evolves to support future requirements. I understand the wider Tesco architectural strategy and champion its application to the systems that I work on. At this level my job starts to become just as much about exercising technical judgment as it does about implementation. I am comfortable managing competing priorities and am able to bring order to ambiguous scenarios. I create optimal outcomes combining short-term and long-term goals, utilising data driven decision making techniques to take appropriate trade-offs. I can identify risks and proactively engage with product and programme managers. I am a strong communicator within my team and to my stakeholders. I am a trusted mentor, a role-model for more junior engineers. I am approachable and am frequently asked to mentor those around me. I prioritise sharing skills and technical knowledge across the directorate, both informally in 1:1 discussions and by arranging more formal training opportunities. 

Programming System Design Development Practise Infrastructure Software Security Operations and Maintenance Core Technology Development Lifecycle Product Methodologies Retail Technology Awareness Communication & Influencing Data Analytics & Insights Strategic Thinking & Problem Solving Finance & Procurement Curiosity & Learning Embracing and Enabling Change