Senior Head of Product - Retail and In Store
Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: Holborn Store Support Centre and Home, London, EC1N 2HT
Contract type: Fixed-Term Assignment
Business area: Sainsbury's Tech
Closing date: 19 September 2024
Requisition ID: 254554
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.
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 inspiring and multidisciplinary individuals who are empowered to solve hard problems in ways our customers love and serve the needs of our business.
The Senior Head of Product [SHoP] is a critical leadership role, accountable for fusing technology strategy at the heart of our retail channel, leading an experienced and talented Head of Product Managers. The SHoP roles lead our Product vision and strategy in our most complex and strategically important domains. Working with seniors stakeholders, they oversee the development and management of the product roadmap based on the adopted strategies and visions. The Role is inherently cross functional and works closely with engineering, XD, Retail, and marketing.
The SHoP will typically be responsible for multiple product families that make up an end-end journey. The product roadmap will typically be split into outcomes, that require the SHoP to coordinate multiple Head of Product managers. The SHoP is responsible for spearheading investigation and analyses on the product and product market within their product families, evangelising diverse thinking and taking inspiration for the best possible experiences and trade offs between what's possible.
The role demands a highly analytical approach and being able to work highly effective in a matrix environment; the SHoP will typically co-ordinate this matrix. The SHoP is tasked with overseeing the innovation and improvement of the business products as well as the day to day activities in such a way that ensures that product is constantly growing to suit the customers needs. The position requires that the occupier be adept at synthesizing various technologies and capabilities into the business products in such a way that the consumers will love.
The role needs a commercially connected thought leader, combined with the ability to coach and guide stakeholders and teams to unlock future value. Ultimately, the SHoP is impactful in developing the culture and skillset of the Product organisation, shaping and delivering the future value for customers.
As Senior Head of Product for Retail you are heading up our vision and strategy for both our customers and colleagues across the entire Sainsbury’s store estate. We want you to be bold in transforming our technology, seamlessly connecting experiences together to bring easy and value-adding moments to our customers and colleagues. You have the opportunity to be truly experimental in this role, whilst also balancing the optimisation of our existing technologies and hardware across the estate. We want to step change the underlying architecture that supports our vision, thinking E2E in approach and moving towards utilisation of shared services to enable more nimble solutions to be developed.
Through your Heads of Product team you will leader a large team of Product Managers, Senior Product Managers and Group Product Managers who autonomously drive towards the outcomes you collaboratively set and your role is to coach and help them develop their individual visions while aligning to your future holistic view of product in your area.
Apply now to develop and lead the vision of our stores of the future!
What your need to do:
- Partner the senior leaders of the business to fuse business strategy and technology vision and strategy
- Develop the vision, strategy, roadmap and backlog for your family of products that make up an end to end customer journey; focusing on complete end to end customer experiences that deliver multiple strategic priorities, align to our technology strategy and respond to market changes. Bring together and present multiple product visions for product families into a single coherent overview, and assist the head of product to maintain the holistic view of product.
- Own the customer and business value, including secure funding, manage budgets and forecasts through the appropriate financial governance process and relevant technology teams for your family of products. Continuously making effective prioritisation choices to deliver the maximum value and return on capital.
- Spot opportunities across multiple industry verticals, building partnerships outside of the business. Apply insight, data, research, and your own hypothesis on what questions to ask to ensure your team are focused on making the biggest difference for customers and the business.
- Take accountability for end-to-end delivery, ensuring work is prioritised across multiple teams and is in line with the business strategy. Make appropriate trade-offs and prioritisation decisions to ensure the maximum value is achieved and delivered at pace.
- Lead the collaboration with digital designers, other product teams and 3rd parties to launch capabilities and services - maximising re-use across the division/business/brands
- Work with the Heads of Product to define outcomes whilst setting and defining metrics and the north star for the product family
- Manage and report post-launch evaluation to validate that products work for customers or colleagues as designed and value is delivered, measured by appropriate metrics and through post investment reviews as needed
- Build, lead, coach and motivate a team of Product Managers; support them with definition of long term priorities, guiding their focus as they build a vision and actionable backlog with associated benefit/investment cases
How I will succeed:
- Be the trusted advisor to Business stakeholders. Understand and influence the evolution of Business strategy through customer, channel, and Technology lenses
- 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/end to end journey they are responsible for
- 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 Heads of Product, and other 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
What you need to know:
- Extensive knowledge of product/project/ technology programme management and relevant disciplines
- Knowledge and understanding of a retail business and the technology landscape, and how to maximise the value that products can and will add
- Solid knowledge of the commercial landscape
- Understanding of Agile and modern engineering team practices
What you need to show:
- Creating a positive and consistent impact with internal and external audiences; excellent stakeholder management skills, ensuring senior stakeholder advocacy for your product families
- Customer focus, including a relentless focus on understanding, anticipating and exceeding their customers' needs and the ability to collaborate effectively with customers and stakeholders
- 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. 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
- 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
- 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. Ability to switch between strategic visioning and getting into the detail, being the authority in all aspects of the product area
- Demonstrable experience of leading and developing teams, directly and cross-functionally
We are committed to making Tech a place where people love to work where diverse and engaged team make a purpose 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.
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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).