Principal Integration Engineer

Job Introduction

We are looking for an exceptional Principal Integration Engineer to shape and evolve the Selfridges integration landscape. This is one of the broadest technical roles in the team, spanning almost every technology we run. You’ll define the technical direction, standards and engineering approach for secure, scalable and supportable integrations. The role combines strategic ownership with hands-on technical leadership, setting the patterns, standards and platforms that other teams rely on while staying close to design, technical review and leading the modernisation of the estate.

Reporting to the Head of Engineering and Quality, you will translate strategy into delivery leading the modernisation of our integration estate by shaping the integration approach, design and roadmap. You'll work closely with architects, engineering and platform teams to keep integration design decisions aligned to our wider technology strategy.

Role Responsibility

Our estate reflects a good blend of build-and-buy technology with established enterprise platforms alongside a growing set of modern digital, cloud and SaaS systems, connected through Oracle SOA & ODI, managed APIs and a GraphQL layer. As with many retailers, some integrations have accumulated over time and now need to be simplified and modernised.

As Principal Integration Engineer, you'll set the technical direction and standards, adopting modern integration patterns and engineering practices to deliver secure, scalable, supportable solutions. This includes exploring API-first design, event-driven integration, cloud-native services, and the right use of automation and AI where they add real business value.

You'll also look ahead, helping shape and evolve our current and target-state integration architecture, working with Senior Solution Architects to build the roadmap to get us there.

As Principal Integration Engineer you will:

• Act as the principal technical SME for integration engineering for Selfridges providing deep leadership across various integration solutions 
• Own integration delivery and roadmap, ensuring we design & build a coherent system architecture across Selfridges; driving end to end governance, design patterns, coding standards, code review practices and CI/CD approaches that teams adopt in practice
• Define and maintain integration engineering standards, patterns, guardrails, and best practices for system-to-system integrations, APIs, events, and workflows
• Provide hands-on technical leadership for the design and implementation of complex Oracle SOA integrations and related integration technologies
• Drive adoption of modern integration patterns, including API-first design, event-driven architectures, cloud-native, microservices aligned integrations, and reusable integration components secure by design
• Lead a small integration team, setting clear priorities, improving ways of working and ensuring delivery excellence with line management responsibility for internal integration engineers alongside third-party engineers
• Manage integration suppliers and partners providing technical governance, monitoring SLA performance, and ensuring delivery aligns with the established design principles, standards and strategies.
• Mentor and develop integration engineers, raising technical capability, architectural understanding and engineering discipline across the team
• Work closely with Delivery Managers, Solution Architects and third parties to understand integration requirements, translating them into robust integration designs that balance speed, resilience, supportability and long-term value
• Evaluate opportunities to simplify the integration landscape and introduce more cost-effective, automated and flexible integration approaches 
• Collaborate with Solution Architects to define clear boundaries between integration and application layers, keeping integration aligned with our wider IT strategy and target-state architecture
• Monitor technology trends, platform capabilities and industry best practice in integration engineering, using insight and evidence to evolve our integration roadmap
• Oversee ongoing support and maintenance, ensuring business-critical integrations and data flows stay stable and reliable
• Lead integration workshops and design sessions, and take part in technical governance reviewing designs, assuring quality, and presenting at forums where needed

The Ideal Candidate

• Significant experience working with integrations ideally with a retail background
• Strong, hands-on integration engineering experience with integration platforms such as Oracle Fusion Middleware (SOA/ODI/MFT), Boomi APIM, Graph QL is beneficial
• Experience designing scalable, secure and maintainable integration architectures in a complex enterprise environment 
• Solid understanding of APIs such as REST and SOAP, XML and JSON, as well as file-based integrations including EDI and CSV 
• A proven track record of owning an integration platform end-to-end, with a strong understanding of modern integration approaches such as headless and microservices architectures.
• Good understanding of Service Oriented Architecture principles, with practical experience designing and building microservices
• Strong understanding of data transformation, mapping, validation and the controls needed to keep data accurate and reliable across integrated systems
• Comfortable with cloud-native building blocks VPC, IAM, containers, API Gateway, Lambda, encryption, TLS, application security and automation
• Experience designing and engineering interfaces for enterprise systems e.g. order management, Xstore, Salesforce, merchandising or Workday is beneficial
• Ability to assess new integration technologies and platform capabilities pragmatically, weighing innovation against cost, maintainability and delivery risk
• Experience using agile methodologies (e.g. Scrum, SAFe) 
• Experience leading a small integration team setting clear priorities, improving ways of working and ensuring delivery excellence 
• Experience mentoring and guiding integration engineers, helping them improve design quality, coding practices and architectural awareness
• A structured, analytical approach to problem-solving, architecture and prioritization comfortable navigating technical complexity, managing trade-offs, and bringing clarity to ambiguous situations
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to engage both technical and business stakeholders 

Selfridges