ABOUT US

Since Harvey Nichols first opened in Knightsbridge in 1831, it has led the way in sourcing the most desirable and cutting-edge designer brands. Recognised as the UK's premier luxury fashion retailer, Harvey Nichols is internationally renowned for its expertly edited fashion and beauty merchandise, premium food and wine offer and award-winning restaurants.
Harvey Nichols has seven stores within the UK and Ireland, consisting of five large-format stores in London, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, and two small-format stores in Bristol and Dublin. A beauty concept store, Beauty Bazaar, Harvey Nichols, opened in Liverpool in November 2012.

TECHNOLOGY AT HARVEY NICHOLS

We are investing heavily to grow our online presence – particularly internationally – and technology is at the forefront of everything we do. We have an ambitious portfolio of business change activity across eight programmes, each with multiple projects to drive the growth of the business. Underpinned by modern technology to scale the business, we have fully embraced the cloud and use DevOps, including Agile practices, to drive velocity. Our architecture principles focus on best-of-breed platforms, connected by APIs to create a global retail ecosystem. Examples of this are our recently announced five-year partnership with Salesforce for use of its marketing, customer services and Mulesoft data integration platforms. We also use Jira/Confluence for managing our tech development and we are a data-driven organisation experimenting with data science and AI. It is an exciting time to be part of the Tech team.

OUR TECH TEAM

The Tech team – based in London and Edinburgh – is a friendly bunch, and works in a highly collaborative way. Using tools such as Teams, members are able to connect wherever they are, enabling them to work flexibly. We believe in flat structures, where teams and individuals are empowered to drive change in our dynamic and fast-paced business, and decisions are made quickly. Training and learning are also important to us – we have extensive knowledge and experience of fashion, beauty and hospitality, as well as tech systems, all backed up by external accreditation and internal communities of practice.

And we don’t sit in the basement, either – we are at the heart of the business!

Meet some of the team

Euan Wilson

As the IT Service Team Leader for Harvey Nichols I have an exciting role which presents new challenges and opportunities every day! The role is two-fold, so being able to split my time efficiently is important. Half of my job is managing the IT Service Desk, consisting of a team of 6 people providing support to the whole business 7 days per week. This part of the role is spent ensuring we provide the best IT support possible, so that we can continue providing a fantastic experience to our customers. The other half of the role is working with the IT Service Manager on Service Governance for the full IT department to ensure we’re all working together as one big team.

No day is ever the same. I can be on the phones taking support calls to being involved with various processes across the entire department. Being involved with things like change management, KPI monitoring and service transition gives me the opportunity to shape the way the department operates and make a real difference to the company as a whole.

I have also been given the opportunity to join the Harvey Nichols Explorer Academy. This is a course for people who are looking to progress into management to develop their management skills. This has taught me many valuable skills and techniques to be an effective manager.

I’m a very family-orientated guy; I have a wife and 9 month old daughter. My role allows me to be really flexible which enables me to support my family.

Overall, working at Harvey Nichols is exciting, positively challenging and there are plenty of opportunities to learn and develop.

Luis Garcia

My name is Luis and I’m the Business Intelligence (BI) Developer. An important role of the BI team is to take raw data generated by the business and turn it into information that can be used to make informed business decisions. My day typically involves the writing of SQL queries, data integrity checks and user incident resolution, but it always begins with a Board (HN’s reporting tool) system check. It’s the BI team’s responsibility to ensure that the quality of data is maintained in the Board application and we strive to ensure that users across the business have access to accurate data no matter the source. In a business as longstanding and varied as Harvey Nichols, this can often present interesting challenges and HN offers great career progression opportunities for driven individuals willing to tackle them.
My time is generally split 50:50 between BAU (business as usual) and project work. I really enjoy the working environment at HN. The BI team are passionate about data and the IT department is a friendly, hardworking and fun place to work. There are plenty of opportunities to socialise outside of the office and we have regular head office, IT and BI team events ranging from bowling or curry nights, to head office drinks or parties!
The most gratifying part of my job is being able to solve problems which can have a direct impact on the company’s decision-making. I really enjoy the variety that the role brings and the high level of engagement with users from across the business – in any given day I can feel like a teacher, an (data) engineer and firefighter all in one.