<p><strong>Why join us</strong></p> <p>The Packaged & Speciality category sits at the heart of our food business, and as Head of Buying you will be responsible for the commercial success of a substantial part of this category. We look for people who can lead a team to deliver a compelling customer offer, manage suppliers to deliver the right product, cost and sustainability, and achieve our market share and commercial objectives. Through your thinking and leadership we will continue to step on our commercial offer and land change to ensure Packaged & Speciality remains a winning category for Sainsbury’s for now and the future.&nbsp;</p> <p>Managing close to £1B of sales across our World Foods, Hot Beverages, Dairy Alternatives and Canned Meat, Fish & Poultry business, you will have a strong commercial background, top calibre strategic thinking and the ability to engage stakeholders across the business to deliver your objectives. You also bring positive energy and a people-focused mindset to build a high-performing team that colleagues want to be a part of. As the Head of Buying you will be responsible for the commercial success of one of the most substantial areas within our Food business; you’ll be front and centre of Sainsbury’s First Choice for Food strategy.</p> <p><strong>What you'll do&nbsp;</strong></p> <p>This category encompasses some of Sainsbury’s most important customer essentials within Hot Beverages and Canned MFP, and one of our key growth areas in World Foods. In this role you will be accountable for developing a market-leading customer proposition, and building strong relationships with both branded and own brand suppliers to ensure we deliver strong availability and great value for our customers as well as delivering our sustainability objectives. For World Foods you will also be accountable for building the profile of the category across Sainsbury’s and engaging other teams to deliver a proposition that makes us customers’ first choice for these products.</p> <ul> <li>Manage the relationships with our key partnership suppliers, overseeing the performance and strategic direction of those relationships</li> <li>Lead a team of Buyers to effectively deliver our First Choice for Food strategy, coaching and supporting their development to drive success in their areas through: <ul> <li>Working in collaboration with cross-functional team to define and execute a successful category strategy for the buying area</li> <li>Defining the sourcing strategy for the area, selecting the suppliers that will best support the strategy and leading through supplier business plans to deliver right product ranges at the best cost and quality, while ensuring surety of supply, availability and sustainability outcomes</li> <li>Developing and implementing a customer-led selling strategy that grows market share and delivers our internal commercial targets</li> <li>Develop and implement a successful value and promotional strategy within the category framework</li> <li>Identify new product opportunities and develop and launch products that bring in new customers to the category and that are commercially viable</li> <li>Building relationships, negotiating and establishing supplier plans with branded and own brand suppliers that deliver competitive advantage</li> <li>Work with the Category Planning, Convenience and Digital teams to optimise ranges and effectively market these across all our channels</li> </ul></li> <li>Develop a highly effectively cross functional team, leading a team of buyers while also building close and strong relationships with colleagues in other teams&nbsp;</li> <li>Operate as a central member of the Packaged & Speciality Leadership Team, actively shaping the strategy, vision and direction of the category&nbsp;</li> <li>Proactively participate in strategic developments that impact the category by managing and/or leading elements of the total category plan</li> <li>Recognising the impact of the category, work with relevant teams to support the delivery of our Plan for Better objectives and wider goals to positively impact the UK and Global food system.</li> <li>Stay connected with other Heads of Buying across all BUs to share best practice and learning and play active role in the wider BU.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Who you are</strong>&nbsp;</p> <ul> <li>Strong leadership skill set. You can take ownership, set a vision and clear objectives for your team, and then motivate, support and coach them to deliver at pace. You can prioritise across multiple competing objectives, plan effectively, and manage workload for your team</li> <li>You can lead a team in developing a compelling selling strategy, with a strong focus on understanding our customers to develop propositions that will make us first choice for food</li> <li>You are excellent at managing supplier relationships, and are able to build productive relationships in formal and informal modes</li> <li>You have strong commercial acumen and are a confident negotiator with sound judgement (including knowing when to escalate or seek other input), strong analytical skills, ability to identify and manage risks effectively, broad business and industry knowledge, and the ability to take a longer-term perspective.&nbsp;</li> <li>You are resilient in the face of pressure and setbacks, this is a challenging role and you need to be able to bounce back and continue to motivate yourself and your team when things don’t go as expected</li> <li>You are able to operate and make decisions at all levels of detail, comfort working both with and without data</li> <li>You have experience of building a broad network (externally and internally) to engage and influence others across an organisation to deliver your objectives, at senior and more junior levels, within your team, elsewhere in the business and with wider supply market.&nbsp;</li> <li>You have an interest and passion for the product areas, particularly a drive to do a better job for our customers with our World Foods offer and to step on the sustainability of our tea, coffee and MFP sourcing</li> <li>Supermarket retail knowledge is desirable, but commercial background more important</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>#LI-MB3</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>