Contract type: Permanent

Location: Hatfield (Hybrid working – 3 days in the office)

Working hours per week: 40 hours

Level: Associate

Application Closing Date: Friday 28th August 2026

About Us

Our mission is to deliver joy in every shop, through unbeatable choice, unrivalled service, and reassuringly good value. We’re also on a mission to empower our business with smart technology; we’ve recently launched our AI Academy, providing a tailored AI learning journey for every colleague.

We’re Ocado Retail, a market-leading joint venture between Ocado Group and M&S, and the world’s largest dedicated online supermarket, ocado.com. Not only is Ocado the only place to shop a full range of M&S food online, it’s also the home to the widest online supermarket range in the UK and champion of small, independent brands. We’re also the brains behind Zoom by Ocado, our same-day grocery delivery service.

About The Team And The Role

At Ocado Retail, our IT & Product Support model focuses on the in-house ownership of business-critical systems through dedicated, high-performing “Product Pods”. This role sits within our newly established AI & Agentic Pod, a dynamic, highly strategic unit with a business-wide remit. The mission of this pod is to review processes across every department and identify opportunities where generative AI can be used to build, test, and deploy robust micro-applications at extreme pace, organically scaling them into a unified business operating platform.

As an AI & Agentic Solutions Developer, you will be the core technical driver behind this ecosystem. In the first phase, you will lay down the foundational groundwork, engineering a high-performance “backbone” that handles authentication, secure data transfer, and automated provisioning, allowing micro-apps to be effortlessly slotted in and communicate with one another. Following this, you will build and launch rapid, AI-driven applications that drive massive productivity gains, whilst also collaborating with our central Data Science team to construct intuitive user interfaces that make their advanced, multi-agent conversational flows accessible to standard business users.

What You’ll Do

• Core Backbone Engineering: Architect, build, and maintain a lightweight, high-performance platform backbone that manages shared authentication, secure data transfer, and automated provisioning for all micro-applications.
• Rapid Micro-App Development: Design, prototype, and deploy lightweight, high-productivity micro-applications at extreme pace, utilising generative AI capabilities to streamline business-wide processes.
• Complex Agentic Solutions: Build a secondary layer of deeper, more complex business applications that natively leverage generative AI and agentic behaviors to unlock unprecedented operational efficiencies.
• Data Science Collaboration & UI/UX: Collaborate closely with the Data Science team to translate their advanced, multi-agent AI modelling and workflows into highly intuitive, user-friendly graphical interfaces.
• Inter-App Orchestration: Ensure all micro-applications can easily communicate with each other, facilitating their organic growth into a wider, highly connected business operating platform.
• Continuous Innovation & Tinkering: Keep pace with the latest developments in generative AI, agentic frameworks, and software development tooling to continually accelerate our prototyping speed.
• Reporting Structure: Report directly to the Engineering Lead.

Essential

Who you are

• Full-Stack Pragmatist: Highly technical, hands-on, and comfortable writing robust backend APIs (e.g., Python, Node.js) as well as designing clean, responsive frontend UIs (e.g., React, Vue, Tailwind CSS) to deliver end-to-end applications.
• Platform & Integration Architect: Strong understanding of authentication patterns (OAuth, JWT), secure API communication, lightweight microservices, and modular software architectures.
• AI Integration Practitioner: Practical experience working with Large Language Models (LLMs), prompt engineering, embedding models, and integrating AI APIs into production-ready software.
• Rapid Prototyper: A “builder” mindset who thrives on speed and agility, preferring to ship, test, and gather user feedback on “good enough” micro-apps rather than spending months over-engineering a solution.
• Bridge Builder: Able to act as the interface between highly technical Data Science teams and everyday business users, translating complex back-end agentic logic into simple, delightful user journeys.
• Uncompromising Learner: Highly adaptable and genuinely excited by the rapid rate of change in the AI landscape, with a proven ability to pick up new tools, languages, and frameworks in days, not weeks.

Desirable

• Experience with agentic frameworks (e.g., LangChain, LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen) or vector databases.
• Prior experience building internal tools, developer platforms, or automation suites in a retail or e-commerce environment.
• Knowledge of cloud infrastructure (GCP preferred) and containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes).

What’s In It For You

By joining Ocado Retail, you’ll have the chance to experience life at the world’s largest online retailer, work with an amazing bunch of people who challenge what’s possible each day, and grow your skills and career in online retail. You’ll also be part of our AI Academy, a dedicated learning journey designed to empower every colleague with the smart technology skills of the future.

If that’s not enough to tempt you, you’ll also get access to loads of great benefits to sweeten the deal. Here’s a taste of what we offer:

Health & Wellbeing: Private medical insurance with option to add your family, Digital GP appointments, market-leading family policies, mental health support, discounted gym memberships, dental insurance, and more.

Spend & Save: Annual bonus scheme split between personal and business objectives, recognition with reward platform, up to 7% matched pension contributions, 15% Ocado discount, 20% M&S discount, free breakfast every day in the office, electric vehicle leasing scheme, and free shuttle bus from Hatfield station to the office.

Never miss the moments that matter: Hybrid working, 26 days holiday plus 8 flexible bank holidays, options to buy extra holiday, 2 weeks work from anywhere, and lifestyle break opportunities.

Our Hiring Process

Lucky for us, we receive a high volume of applications and genuinely appreciate the time and effort invested by every candidate. To ensure a fair and thorough process, every application is reviewed by a member of our team. If your skills and experience are a strong match, a Talent Partner will contact you to discuss the role and guide you through the next steps of our hiring process.

Your Application and AI In the spirit of innovation, we welcome you to use AI tools in your application, just as we use them in our own business at Ocado Retail. However, as you leverage this technology, please don’t lose sight of the most important element: your unique self. Your experiences, passions, and personality are what truly set you apart. Ensure that your application still authentically conveys who you are and why you’re a great fit for us.

Everyone’s welcome

We’re an equal opportunities employer, which means that we make sure all potential colleagues are treated fairly and equally. We want to ensure everyone has a fair chance to apply; if you need this job description in an alternative format (e.g., larger print, different document type, etc.), please reach out to us at careers@ocadoretail.com and we’ll be happy to assist you, and if you require reasonable adjustments during the recruitment process, please let us know on the application form.