Senior Architect - AdTech
Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: London Store Support Centre and Home, London, EC1M 6HA
Contract type: Permanent
Business area: Sainsbury's Tech
Closing date: 02 January 2026
Requisition ID: 400043618
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.
The AdTech Architect is a critical technical leader who bridges the gap between high-level retail media strategy and the complex data ecosystems required to power it. You will serve as the primary blueprint designer for how our retail media network interacts with the broader advertising world—integrating on-site search, off-site programmatic, and social platforms into a cohesive, data-driven engine.
You’ll be part of our delivery squads working on Ad-tech, interpreting and following architectural and engineering principles, operating frameworks, and new and improved technology and solutions. With your craft, curiosity and experimentation, you’ll use judgement to apply specific techniques to deliver focused outcomes that support our customers.
What You’ll Do
- Systems Design & Mapping: Define the technical architecture for how our Retail Media Network (RMN) integrates with external DSPs, SSPs, and social platforms.
- Requirements Translation: Act as the primary liaison between Business Stakeholders and Engineering teams. You will take complex feature requests and break them down into technical data requirements.
- Data Integration Strategy: Determine which data sources and systems need to be unified to deliver specific features like audience segmenting, real-time bidding, or attribution modeling.
- Cross-Functional Leadership: Consult for multiple product and engineering squads to ensure new features are scalable and maintain the integrity of the overall advertising ecosystem.
- Vendor & API Evaluation: Lead the technical discovery for third-party integrations, vetting API documentation and system capabilities to ensure they meet our long-term business needs.
Who You Are
- A Systems Thinker: You understand the end-to-end advertising ecosystem and how changes in one component (e.g. product feeds) cascade through DSP activation and ultimately impact measurement and attribution
- The "Technical Translator": You have the rare ability to explain complex AdTech concepts to non-technical business leaders while holding your own in deep-dive sessions with backend engineers.
- A Proactive Problem Solver: You don't wait for a roadmap; you identify bottlenecks in our current data flow and propose architectural shifts to fix them.
- Retail Media Passionate: You understand the unique challenges of the retail space, specifically the value of first-party data and the importance of demonstrating ROAS to brand partners.
Essential Criteria (Skillset)
- Deep AdTech Domain Expertise: Comprehensive understanding of the programmatic landscape, including OpenRTB protocols, identity resolution, and the role of CDPs.
- Retail Media Knowledge: Experience with RMN-specific and how they integrate with a retailer’s e-commerce frontend.
- Technical Architecture Mastery: Proven experience mapping out API integrations and data pipelines. You should be comfortable working with JSON/XML structures and understanding how webhooks and server-to-server tracking work.
- Data Literacy: Strong grasp of SQL and data modeling. You must be able to define how data should be structured in a warehouse to support advertising use cases.
- Privacy & Compliance: Up-to-date knowledge of privacy regulations and a strong understanding of the technical implications across the identity and consent ecosystem.
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: 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.
Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to get 10% off at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat after 4 weeks. This increases to 15% off at Sainsbury’s every Friday and Saturday and 15% off at Argos every pay day. 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 additional holiday. 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, pay 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, you will also be eligible for private healthcare too.
Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).
