The John Lewis Partnership is hiring as its digital business expands to serve customers who continue to shift their business online. Almost 70% of John Lewis and almost 20% of Waitrose sales now take place online. Two years ago, 40% of John Lewis sales were online as were 5% of Waitrose sales.
JLP is looking to fill more than 150 specialist roles, from software engineers to delivery leads, to help deliver customer-facing projects on both websites as well to support the growth and development of the Waitrose and John Lewis apps, which account for almost a quarter of sales at the two brands.
The retail group says that its future growth will be about getting closer to its customers online, and responding as their buying habits change – and that its new hires will play an important role in that. The John Lewis and Waitrose websites together currently see around 55m visits a month.
Sandra Christie, head of engineering at the John Lewis Partnership, says: “We have an industry-leading team driving the digital growth of our two iconic brands, Waitrose and John Lewis. It’s our partners who make the difference and we’re really excited to be making this significant investment in growing our engineering talent.”
Engineers will be working across a range of programs and platforms. Software engineers will work across the John Lewis and Waitrose websites using Kotlin or Java on the back-end and React and Next.js on the front-end. Native app engineers will use both iOS and Android platforms, and data engineers will work on a Google Cloud based data platform. Cloud platform engineers will be working on the partnership’s Google Cloud and AWS-based digital platforms.
John Lewis sells online and from 42 shops as well as an outlet store, while Waitrose sells from three dedicated websites offering groceries, wine and plants and flowers and also operates 332 shops.
John Lewis and Waitrose are both ranked Top50 in RXUK Top500 research.
