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 to feed the nation. The level of data, transactions and variety involved. Then you’ll realise this is a modern software engineering environment, because it has to be. We’ve made significant investment in the standards and principles that shape how we work. We iterate, learn, experiment and champion ways of working such as Agile, Scrum and XP. So you can look forward to exciting opportunities across everything from AI to reusable tech.
Please note - This is a 12 month FTC position
In a nutshell
In Sainsbury’s Tech, we power the UK’s number 1 multi-channel, multi-brand retailer. Our product teams are made up of inspired and multidiscipline individuals who are empowered to solve hard problems in ways our customers love and serve the needs of our business.
The Head of Product (HoP) is a critical leadership role. Relentlessly focused on understanding, anticipating and exceeding customer needs, the HoP creates, drives and champions the long term vision for their product domain to achieve our over-arching business strategy. This product leader is a customer centric motivator who inspires and coaches, while guiding the organisation in the pursuit of value growth.
The HoP defines and drives the use of product metrics to effectively prioritise within their organisation and product domain, and uses their data mindset to coach, challenge and guide their team and stakeholders to make data driven decisions. Displaying a strong understanding of the commercial drivers that determine the viability and longevity of a product while considering the market context and clear definition of the business benefit of products.
The role holder engages in technical discussions, asks questions and challenges their teams to enable the creation of better technology solutions, utilising a variety of techniques to develop a broad understanding of the tech landscape and customer expectations of technology.
What I Need To Do
- Lead our product management practice, developing product teams who deliver the vision of their products, and achieve our strategic business goals.
- Brings together and present multiple product visions together within their domain into a single coherent overview.
- Ensure teams are leveraging common thinking and technologies
- Sets and defines outcomes and metrics for their principal areas.
- Spots opportunities in the market within their domain.
- Aligning product visions to end to end propositions/brands
- Refine and optimise within defined capital and request support on priority or capacity contention
- Work across divisions to shape dependent roadmaps and features, escalating where prioritisation trade off’s are needed across teams.
- Build strong relationships up to DD level to engage on the visions/roadmaps for their principal product areas.
- Lead and coach a team of senior product managers directly within your domain.
- Contribute and coach better product across the division using product competency and internal frameworks.
- Take the lead to trial and embed new practices, principles and tools.
- Accountable for nurturing talent in the team and foster a learning culture and high trust
- Cultivate, develop and maintain 3rd party supplier relationships, supporting opportunity progress
Specifically focusing on:
- Leading the Cloud, Hosting and Connectivity Product Domain, accountable for defining and delivering these capabilities as platforms‑as‑a‑product, with clear value propositions, outcomes, roadmaps and measures of success.
- Building and evolving shared platform products that underpin Sainsbury’s digital estate, enabling product and engineering teams to deliver value faster through secure, reliable, scalable and cost‑effective infrastructure, connectivity and cloud services.
- Championing a cloud‑first approach, driving cloud migration and adoption across the organisation, and shaping product‑led roadmaps for hybrid and multi‑cloud platforms, ensuring teams can consume cloud services in a consistent, well‑governed and self‑service manner.
- Owning the product strategy for hosting, cloud and enterprise connectivity, including network and connectivity services, ensuring these platforms are designed for resilience, performance, security and operational excellence at scale.
- Working closely with Engineering, Architecture, Security and Service teams to evolve platform capabilities, renew foundational technologies, introduce new platform services, and decommission legacy infrastructure, balancing innovation with stability, risk and cost efficiency.
- Embedding platform‑as‑a‑product principles, including strong customer understanding (internal users), clear service definitions, effective product metrics, and continuous improvement based on usage, performance and feedback.
- Be the champion for product area, determining the right level or type of material to communicate the experience, benefits and long‑term vision across a variety of audiences including development teams, stakeholders at all levels, partners and external parties
- Be the arbitration and escalation point for prioritisation and trade offs within their product area to deliver the maximum value and return on capital.
- Maintain a good level of awareness, interest and understanding of the existing and future end to end technology stacks/interfaces, including communicating clearly and coaching others on where and how to develop these technologies so they work seamlessly for customers and colleagues
- Ensure that the team maintains a realistic 90‑day roadmap, as well as a prioritised and estimated full year backlog, regularly communicating progress and proactively managing risks/issues to remove blockers. Support the team in understanding future risks to mitigate.
- Support communication and resolution of live product incidents and effectively prioritise, coordinate and communicate the resolution of production issues
- Maintain a highly collaborative relationship with engineering, support at all levels for teams to understand and work together to solve problems for our customers and the business
- Collaborate with the Head of Product, and other Principal Product Managers across the business to ensure consistency, drive overall strategic business outcomes/shared objectives, and continuously improve product management across the division
- Develop a strong team of product managers, building the competency and enhancing the craft within the community. This includes developing a culture of learning, empowerment, experimentation and collaboration
- Drive the team and their products towards the future organisation aspirations, through constructive challenge and thought leadership, fostering a culture where our customer ambition inspires the team to aim high and deliver at pace
- Contribute and lead within the the Product Community of practice
How I will succeed:
What I need to know:
- Knowledge and understanding of a retail business and the technology landscape, and how to maximise the value that products can and will add
- Understanding of Agile delivery and modern engineering team practices
- Knowledge of technical product development principles and methodologies
What I need to show:
- Commercial acumen, including understanding of the commercial drivers that determine the viability and longevity of a product, the ability to determine return on investment and use this insight to inform prioritisation, taking market context into consideration
- Customer focus, including a relentless focus on understanding, anticipating and exceeding their customers' needs and the ability to collaborate effectively with customers and stakeholders
- Data driven, including a drive for the use of product metrics to prioritise a roadmap effectively and the ability to use data and insight appropriately to make informed decisions whilst mitigating for any possible limitations and/or risks of misinterpretation
- Product processes, including the ability to adapt behaviour to all stages of the Product Lifecycle, a deep understanding of delivery approaches and when to use them, a focus on prioritisation of outcomes over outputs, the ability to motivate teams working within constraints and a drive to continually improve ways of working
- Strategic vision, including the ability to create, drive and champion a long-term product vision in line with a business strategy, the capability to anticipate the implications of how a product vision could interplay with a wide range of teams and the ability to drive collaboration with others to deliver effectively
- Technical curiosity, including the ability to translate between customer requirements and technology delivery, the desire to engage in technical discussions and challenge teams, the ability to use of a variety of techniques to develop understanding of the tech landscape and customer expectations of technology as relevant to a product or industry
- Creative problem solving, enthusiasm for delivering change through people and technology
- Ability to switch between strategic visioning and getting into the detail, being the authority in all aspects of the product area
- Creating a positive and consistent impact with internal and external audiences; excellent stakeholder management skills, ensuring senior stakeholder advocacy for your product families
- Demonstrable experience of leading and developing teams, directly and cross-functionally
- Strong communication and influencing skills across the organisation at all levels
- Success in delivering in multiple product teams across different stages of the customer journey
Resources available to me:
- Team of up to 15 Product Managers (C4 & C5 grades)
- £5m-£20 capex budget
- Product community of practice
- Large team of dedicated and matrixed resources
- Learning and development within Sainsbury’s
- Internal product expertise and co‑learning opportunities within a highly collaborative environment
We are committed to making Tech a place where people love to work where diverse and engaged team make a purposeful contribution. Sainsbury’s is committed to being the most inclusive retailer, and flexible working including job sharing is welcomed wherever possible. In Tech we welcome such conversations and are proud to champion a diverse and inclusive culture.
As well as lots of on-the-job training and endless opportunities, you’ll get:
- Colleague discount across our multi-brands – Sainsbury’s, Argos and Habitat
- Holiday allowance
- Bonus scheme
- Pension plan
- Special offers on gym memberships, restaurants, holidays, retail vouchers and more
Work-life balance is important to us, so we offer our colleagues as much flexibility as possible in line with the needs of their role. We trust them to decide how, where and when they work, combining remote and collaborative working with a flexible approach to hours, giving them plenty of time and space for life outside of work whilst delivering against our business goals.
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