Group Product Manager
Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: Holborn Store Support Centre and Home, London, EC1N 2HT
Contract type: Permanent
Business area: Sainsbury's Tech
Closing date: 28 March 2025
Requisition ID: 295434
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.
Every week we move millions of products to our customers at record speeds. Brilliant customer experiences at this kind of pace, require fresh and appealing products to be available whenever and however our customers shop with us. And in this area of our business, we help to make sure that happens.
By engineering innovative, smart technology, we put the tools in our colleagues’ hands to power a global supply chain. Whether it’s wine from New Zealand or milk from the local dairy farm, our tech performs. We solve problems at scale. We process billions of records, predicting and planning to make our customers lives easier. We keep our warehouses and stores operating smoothly around the clock, because what’s important to our customers, is important to us.
Reporting into the Senior Head of Product, The Group Product Manager is relentlessly focused on understanding, anticipating and exceeding stakeholder needs for specific products and broader projects that align to long-term business strategy. The Group Product Manager will be accountable for leading a team of Product Managers who champion the long-term vision for their products in line with our over-arching business goals and works horizontally across the immediate team and the broader product and tech function to coordinate and prioritise the diverse requirements of their product that may fall into other delivery areas.
The Group Product Manager understands the differing requirements of the colleague, customer, business and Engineering/Architecture and uses this knowledge to ultimately drive the product and their team. This includes engaging in technical discussions and deciphering business value and spotting opportunities. They use product metrics to prioritise their product roadmap effectively and seeks out the data and insight that enables them to make informed decisions.
Working in Agile teams, you’ll build a highly collaborative relationship with your Engineering colleagues and support in defining, delivering and iterating features and finding creative ways to deliver great experiences for our customers.
You’ll utilise a variety of techniques to develop your understanding of the tech landscape and customer expectations of technology, using product metrics to prioritise their specific product roadmap effectively and seeking out data and insights to allow you to make informed decisions.
More about the role
This Group Product Manager role focuses on all things “article” which means the products we sell whether that’s Branded or Own Brand food, Tu Clothing or General Merchandise articles. From how we gather the right article data from our suppliers first time, to how we improve processes using commercial technology. This is a highly collaborative role working daily with senior stakeholders across all areas of the Sainsbury’s network who require high quality commercial “article” data to support their day-to-day operations.
Whist a customer may not think about all the hundreds of data points a tin of beans has – you will! To get that tin of beans into a customers basket uses many processes, people and technology. You’ll be accountable for scoping and building the right technology solutions to provide different data to different business teams. For example, Logistics may require accurate dimensions for the pallets of beans, Digital may require accurate product descriptions for the GOL website, Legal will require accurate nutritional data and Retail teams will need correct barcodes. All of this data stems from your teams software – the better the software, the better the quality of data, the fewer pain-points for millions of our customers every week.
This an exciting role, in a transformative space. We are on a mission to make good food joyful, accessible and affordable for everyone, everyday. To help us towards our north star, you’ll be expected to:
- You and your team will be accountable for part of a Commercial software revolution – setting our vision and strategy to allow us to rip out monolithic 20+ year software and replacing it with modern Commercial Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software.
- Support end-to-end delivery of strategic initiatives, using product artefacts as Roadmaps and documentation. Regularly sharing progress updates to Senior Leadership Teams.
- Track both effort and value delivery identifying opportunities for cost reduction, using this insight to inform prioritisation of opportunities for the product.
- You’ll line manage a team of Product Managers and Senior Product Managers working in the Article space. You’ll also work closely with Heads of Product, Engineering and Architecture to design and build best in class internal and external Commercial software.
- You’ll collaborate with other product teams across the business such as Logistics, Supply Chain, Finance, Digital and Retail to build products that customers love.
- Monitor relevant industry trends and engage both internal and external teams as appropriate to build shared insight
More about you
Knowledge and understanding of a retail business and the technology landscape, and how to maximise the value that products can and will add. Having experience using SAP or other ERP systems would be beneficial.
- A team player that has experience in managing a team of Product Managers.
- Understanding of Agile delivery and modern engineering team practices
- Knowledge of technical product development principles and methodologies
- Ability to translate business goals, technology strategy and market knowledge into a product roadmap that prioritises delivery of value and enables future business agility
- Anticipating risks and opportunities, responding to escalations at pace and coaching others to find solutions based on your expertise
- Ability to switch between strategic visioning and getting into the detail, being the authority in all aspects of your product
- Awareness of existing and future stacks/interfaces for the product and how to develop these so they work seamlessly for customers and colleagues
- A high level of team contribution, seek opportunities to provide input and support across the team and outside core areas of focus
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 20% of salary, depending on how we perform. 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, interest free car loan of up to £10k, 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. 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).
