Associate Data Scientist
Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: London Store Support Centre and Home, London, EC1M 6HA
Contract type: Permanent
Business area: Marketing
Closing date: 25 July 2025
Requisition ID: 400006744
We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you at Sainsbury’s. We’re one of the biggest supermarkets in the UK with one of the largest websites. So marketing here really happens at scale. We move a lot faster than you’d think too, across Brand Planning, Brand Comms and Creative, Digital Marketing, CRM and Loyalty, Nectar 360, Insights, and Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability. More people shopping with us each week means more interactions. And thanks to data insight, we understand customers in a way that almost nobody else does. We work alongside incredible brand partners and the best agencies around. So if you have a passion to learn, grow and experience new teams, come and explore it all with us.
Why join us
Joining the Data & Analytics team at Sainsbury's as an Associate Data Scientist offers a unique opportunity to make a significant impact on our customer engagement strategies across various brands. As part of a collaborative and innovative environment, you will have the chance to leverage cutting-edge data science techniques to drive personalised marketing communications, ultimately enhancing customer loyalty and value. With a focus on continuous learning, supportive mentoring, and a vibrant community of data professionals, you will be empowered to develop your technical skills, contribute to impactful projects, and shape the future of retail analytics in a dynamic and customer-centric organisation.
What you'll do
As an Associate Data Scientist within the Customer and Loyalty team at Sainsbury's, you will be instrumental in leveraging data science solutions to tackle marketing challenges and opportunities aimed at enhancing customer loyalty and generating additional value. Your role will involve developing and optimising customer models using techniques such as regression, classification, clustering, causal inference, and graphing to drive personalised marketing communications across various channels. You will collaborate with engineering teams to maximise the potential of available data sources, ensuring the deployment of models aligns with best practises, and presenting your work to stakeholders while supporting end-users in integrating model outputs into their marketing and insights activities. Additionally, you will actively contribute to the Data and Analytics community by sharing insights and techniques that can drive positive change across teams, while ensuring all code and outputs are documented, repeatable, scalable, and shareable through collaborative tools.
Who you are
As an Associate Data Scientist at Sainsbury's, you are a highly analytical and innovative professional with a strong foundation in data science and machine learning techniques. With your ability to translate complex business challenges into structured data science problems and drive meaningful insights, you play a pivotal role in delivering data-driven solutions that enhance customer personalization and drive customer loyalty. Your critical thinking skills, curiosity, and attention to detail enable you to develop and optimise customer models, collaborate with cross-functional teams, and present actionable insights to stakeholders, contributing to the continuous improvement of marketing strategies and customer experiences.
Essential Criteria
- SQL proficiency – strong ability to extract and manipulate data.
- Python skills – or a clear interest in learning Python.
- Critical and analytical thinking – especially for solving unseen problems.
- Curiosity and scepticism – to question assumptions and explore data deeply.
- Attention to detail – while maintaining awareness of the broader context.
- Communication skills – particularly for explaining technical concepts to non-technical audiences.
- Presentation skills – ability to present and explain models to stakeholders like marketing executives.
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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 5% 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. 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. 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).
