• Job Description

  Req#: 226841

  Why join us

  
  Joining Sainsbury's Tech as a Senior Head of Engineering means being part of a dynamic and innovative organisation at the forefront of the retail industry. You'll have the opportunity to shape and drive the overarching tech vision in a large and complex technology domain, while leading a talented team of Heads of Engineering, Engineers, and Delivery Managers. We foster a culture of agility, innovation, and collaboration, providing the space for you to make a real impact on our day-to-day operations and create solutions that enhance the customer experience. With a strong focus on talent development, continuous improvement, and delivering value, you'll be part of a team that values technical excellence and embraces new technologies. Join us and become a crucial driver of our ongoing success in providing exceptional service to our customers.
  

  
  What you'll do

  
  As the Senior Head of Engineering at Sainsbury's Tech, you will play a pivotal role in driving the overarching tech vision and strategy for a defined group of engineering families in a particularly large or complex technology domain. Working closely with the Director of Engineering, you will inspire and lead a team of Heads of Engineering, Engineers, and Delivery Managers, fostering a culture of innovation, high technical standards, and agility. Your responsibilities will span people leadership, strategy development, stakeholder engagement, delivery management, governance, and financial management. You will provide motivational leadership at scale, build a strong talent pipeline, and drive cultural change towards agile ways of working. You will also play a key role in shaping and iterating our transformation agenda, ensuring seamless delivery of products and platforms, managing budgets, forging strategic partnerships, and making critical decisions that align with the overall business objectives. As the leader of a large matrixed team across different locations and skillsets, you will facilitate effective communication, collaboration, and continuous improvement within your domain. Overall, your expertise, vision, and strategic thinking will be instrumental in driving the culture, engineering capabilities, and business value within your domain.
  

  
  Who you are

  
  As a Senior Head of Engineering for Sainsbury's Tech, you are a highly experienced and influential leader within the technology domain, playing a crucial role in shaping and driving the overarching tech vision alongside the Director of Engineering. Your exceptional analytical abilities and mastery of working in a matrix environment enable you to effectively manage multiple Heads of Engineering and oversee the development and delivery of technology roadmaps. With your strong focus on people leadership, you inspire and motivate a diverse team of engineers, delivery managers, and staff members, fostering a culture of innovation and high technical standards. Your strategic mindset and excellent communication skills allow you to engage with stakeholders at all levels, driving improvements and ensuring seamless delivery of products and platforms. As a servant leader, you empower teams to perform their best and make evidence-based decisions, while optimising team structure, capabilities, and culture to achieve effective and efficient outcomes.

  Qualifications

  We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer so you’ll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there’s always the chance to try something new — whether that’s as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working. When you join our team, we’ll also offer you an amazing range of benefits. Here are some of them:

  Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to save 10% on your shopping online and instore at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat, and we regularly increase the discount to 15% at points during the year. We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover. You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 65% of salary, depending on how we perform (in cash and shares).

  Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance, and you can buy up to an additional week's holiday, and we provide private healthcare. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, salary advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers. You'll also receive a company car cash allowance unless you are going to travel 10,000 business miles in your role, then you'll be able to choose a car. And if you ever need it there is also an employee assistance programme.

  Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks’ pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks’ pay for paternity leave.

  Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).

  Responsibilities

  We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you at Sainsbury’s. Think about the scale it takes for us to feed the nation. The level of data, transactions and variety it involves. Then you’ll realise that ours is a modern software engineering environment because it has to be. We’ve made serious investment into a Tech Academy and into setting standards and principles. We iterate, learn, experiment and push ways of working such as Agile, Scrum and XP. So you can look forward to awesome opportunities in everything from AI to reusable tech.

• About the company

  Shop online at Sainsbury's for groceries, clothing, homewares, electricals, financial services and more. Together we’re helping everyone eat better.

Notice