Part Time Regional Stores Director - East Midlands
Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: London Store Support Centre - Field Based, London, EC1M 6HA
Contract type: Permanent
Business area: Retail
Closing date: 26 April 2026
Requisition ID: 400056451
We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you at Sainsbury’s. As the link between sellers and buyers, retail and head office, our Retail Operations team is the cog that keeps things running. With teams focused on store-facing activity, labour, transformation, online, delivery and contact centres, we touch almost every part of the business. It’s an incredibly fast-paced environment, where you need to pivot not just daily, but often hourly. So while we plan as much as we can, it’s vital that we all think beyond our job descriptions and look for ways to optimise and improve everything we do. There’s also a real team ethos here. After all, it’s people like you who will truly transform this part of the business.
In a nutshell
We’re excited to be advertising this Part Time Regional Stores Director position job sharing in the East Midlands (Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Humber, Lincoln, Mansfield, Grantham, Spalding, Newark, Stamford) area, we expect the successful candidate to work 2 – 3 days per week to discuss further during selection.
As a Regional Stores Director, you will inspire, develop and coach high performing leadership teams across a portfolio of stores. You’ll set the standard for brilliant leadership, operational excellence and customer service — creating the conditions for stores to thrive, colleagues to grow and retail goals to be delivered.
What you’ll be doing
Developing brilliant people
- Creating an inclusive, engaging culture where colleagues feel valued, supported and able to be themselves.
- Working in close partnership with People Partners to listen to colleague feedback and turn insight into meaningful action.
- Building strong succession pipelines through robust talent and workforce plans, with personal ownership of developing future leaders.
- Acting as a visible coach and role model, recognising potential and growing leadership capability at every level.
Delivering operational excellence
- Role modelling visible leadership by spending time in stores, at the moments that matter most to customers and colleagues.
- Setting and maintaining high store standards throughout the trading day, with a relentless focus on “every bay, every day”.
Leading flawless execution of launches, events and initiatives, while acting as the retail voice into central teams.
- Ensuring processes are followed to deliver great customer outcomes, safe trading environments and full legal compliance.
- Supporting the transformation of the business by clearly storytelling the “why” behind change and embedding new ways of working.
Driving high performance
- Owning your personal development, continuously building leadership capability, technical knowledge and commercial confidence.
- Creating an agile, multiskilled workforce with the right people in the right place at the right time.
- Championing customers and communities, inspiring teams to deliver brilliant service through clear service behaviours.
- Simplifying ways of working, focusing teams on the inputs that drive sustainable regional performance.
- Leading honest, timely and constructive conversations around underperformance, with clear expectations and accountability.
What you need to know
- A strong understanding of the UK retail landscape, including customer expectations and emerging trends.
- How to run complex operations using clear processes, insight and performance data.
- Experience of shaping and delivering strategic plans across large, multisite operations.
- The ability to stay curious about local markets, competitors and economic factors that influence trading performance.
- Strong commercial and digital capability, including leading remote teams and delivering change at pace.
What you need to show
- Clear, purposeful leadership that sets priorities, defines accountability and aligns teams behind shared goals.
- A practical, outcomes focused approach that keeps things simple, maintains consistent standards and adapts quickly to feedback.
- An open, human leadership style that builds trust, psychological safety and inclusion.
- A commitment to high performance through developing talent, supporting diverse teams and building future capability.
- Strong collaboration, clear communication and sound judgement, using digital tools and insight to make effective decisions.
What decisions you can make
- Ownership of the creation and delivery of the regional plan.
- People decisions relating to recruitment, performance, reward, succession and talent — in partnership with Zone and People leadership teams.
What makes a brilliant Regional Stores Director
- A visible, values led leader who inspires confidence and role models expectations.
- Passionate about people development and building strong leadership pipelines.
- Commercially curious, customer focused and externally aware.
- Calm, decisive and credible in complexity and change.
- Relentlessly focused on standards, execution and performance through people.
Essential criteria
Proven senior leadership experience in a multisite retail or operational environment (Director level or equivalent).
- A strong track record of developing leaders and building succession capability.
- Experience delivering operational excellence and leading through change.
- Commercial acumen with the ability to interpret data and drive performance.
- A leadership style grounded in inclusion, collaboration and accountability.
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.
