About Our Engineering Team

Our engineers work within all our Co-op businesses in small, multi-disciplinary teams. We create software products that could be customer or colleague facing, for example: our online shopping site, tools to track expiry dates or figure out where the gaps are on our shelves. We aim to start with user needs and make sure we’re bringing real value to the business, as well as to users.

We work in a highly collaborative way, and our engineers code collaboratively. We mostly code in pairs or ensembles (also known as mobs). Code quality and habitability are really important to us. We actively encourage engineers to move between teams, and we regularly come together as a community of practice to share knowledge and learn together.

We’re still growing. We currently have around 80 permanent engineers across 7 different business areas. The roles included in our engineering team are generalist Software Engineers, and specialist Front End Engineers (closely aligned with design), Platform Engineers and Quality Coaches.

To learn more about Engineering at Co-op, read our Digital Blog.

Our Tech Stack

There’s no single tech stack. Some of our teams use Python and Django, others use a lot of JavaScript with Node, and some use Java and .Net. Our teams have chosen React or Vue as their front-end frameworks. Most of our applications are cloud hosted in either AWS or Azure.

Our Roles

Software Engineer

As a Software Engineer, you’ll be one of our makers. You’ll design, build, and operate the software-intensive products and services which support our members, stores, operations, and services. You might work on back-end microservices in the cloud, mobile apps, web apps for colleagues, or on integrations with tills in our stores.

Developing across the full stack, you’ll work with specialist Front End Engineers on user interfaces. You’ll also work in close collaboration with specialists in platform engineering to share DevOps responsibility for the quality attributes of your systems. No one engineer takes sole responsibility for their work – we do peer reviews, pair programming, or ensemble (aka "mob") work.

Platform Engineer

Platform Engineers provide the plumbing. Our Platform Engineers work hand in hand with other Engineering colleagues using software-defined approaches to design, build and operate the infrastructure that our software products run on top of. We ensure the systems they rely on provide the security, resilience and performance required to deliver the applications our Co-op relies on.

Quality Coach

You’ll be a quality expert who works in and around our teams to help them build quality in. You’ll get involved early in the development cycle to bring richness and shape to our problem-solving approach by asking the right questions.

Our Quality Coaches are not gatekeepers at the end of the development cycle, they work with all members of the team – engaging early to make sure quality is built into the whole process to make sure we have great outcomes.

Front-End Engineer

As a Front-End Engineer, you’ll be one of our experience champions. You’ll work closely to bridge design and engineering and make sure our products are usable, accessible and consistent.

You’ll help the team to write scalable CSS and semantic HTML. Your understanding of browser APIs and the DOM will help us build modular and tested JavaScript, whether that is using ES standard or frameworks like React. You’ll work within product teams and contribute to community projects like our design system, component libraries and standards.

To be successful you’ll need a working knowledge of the web, browsers and the devices they run on. You’ll also need to be able to measure the impact of performance and quality across those experiences.

Engineering Manager

You’ll lead a team around a dozen engineers at levels from apprentices and new graduates up to senior engineers working across multiple teams and multiple disciplines. As their career coach, you’re responsible for their pastoral care, supporting their career development, and for equipping them to be effective in teams.

You’ll work with other local leaders in a business area to make sure product teams have the appropriate number of engineers and the right balance of skills and capabilities.

As a technical expert, you’ll work with a business area and their product teams as a technical coach. You’ll promote current good practices such as Test-Driven Development, Domain Driven Design, Continuous Integration and Deployment, and DevOps.

You'll be responsible for the quality of the engineers who join us – designing the recruitment strategy and process and performing interviews and helping to train the hiring team.

As part of the leadership team in our technology function, you’ll take part in strategic planning – helping to agree the goals of the function and executing plans to meet them.

Our engineering interview process

At Co-op, we want our interview process to give everyone a fair chance, including disabled and neurodivergent people. You can let us know on your application if you would like to be part of our disability confident scheme. We ask every candidate if there are any adjustments you might need, or other help we could give you, to perform at your best.

Our engineering interview process has been designed to keep things simple. Our aim is to make sure there is a match between what you are looking for and what we are looking for. Each stage is assessed to progress to the next stage.

Telephone Conversation (20-30 mins)

Over Microsoft Teams
For you and Co-op to work out if it's a good fit

2. Behavioural Interview (30-45 mins)

Over Microsoft Teams
Co-op behavioural questions (questions shared in advance of interview)

3. Technical Interview (60-90 mins)

Over Zoom or Microsoft Teams
1-hour technical exercise
Additional technical questions for our senior roles

We can provide feedback from each interview stage and we always ask candidates for feedback too. We believe in a two-way approach to help you have the best experience and continuously improve here at Co-op.