Head of Business Planning
Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: London Store Support Centre and Home, London, EC1M 6HA
Contract type: Permanent
Business area: Finance & Business Development
Closing date: 08 May 2026
Requisition ID: 400057848
We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you here at Sainsbury’s. For a FTSE business, we move incredibly fast. When we’re not leading projects, we’re supporting teams across the wider group to achieve their goals. And here, you can see the impact of your work as soon as you walk into a store, giving you a real sense of purpose and responsibility. Better still, the team around you will listen to your ideas and opinions, and you’ll have every chance to try something new. The scale and complexity of our business mean there’s always something new to learn, and we’ll support you every step of the way. We’re trusted to get on with it. So get ready to make things happen.
About the team
Business Planning is a new, independent team reporting through to the CEO, creating a clear “golden thread” between Sainsbury’s strategy and the change activity happening across the business. We translate strategic ambition into a deliverable plan, bring clarity to priorities and trade-offs, and enable timely decision-making so outcomes land at pace.
If you enjoy working at enterprise scale, connecting people and programmes, and making complex work easier to understand and act on, you’ll find plenty of scope (and support) here.
More about the role
As Head of Business Planning, you’ll support effective planning and decision-making across the Operating Board and change governance forums. Day to day, you’ll build and embed enterprise planning processes and governance frameworks, improving how we prioritise, manage dependencies and make informed choices across a complex portfolio of transformation, change and cost activity.
You’ll develop a single, joined-up view of change (including annual, quarterly and 4‑weekly planning and reporting rhythms), use data modelling and insight to surface risks, opportunities and trade-offs, and shape clear narratives that connect programmes to outcomes and OKRs. You’ll also work closely with senior leaders, Finance and the wider Change community to raise the quality of governance content, strengthen RAID and risk management, and continuously improve our planning, reporting and tooling capabilities.
More about you
You will bring demonstratable experience shaping and implementing enterprise planning approaches in a large, complex organisation, and comfortable operating at senior levels where decisions are high-impact and time-critical. You combine analytical rigour with the ability to tell a clear, compelling story—turning data, ambiguity and competing priorities into structured recommendations, options and trade-offs.
You’re at your best when building trusted relationships, influencing across boundaries and holding teams to account in a constructive way. You role model collaborative, end-to-end ways of working, stay curious about the wider retail landscape, and look for practical ways to simplify processes, improve quality of reporting and strengthen decision-making.
Essential criteria
- Experience of shaping and implementing enterprise level planning in a large organisation
- A strength in data modelling and analysis to draw insight to inform complex decisions
- Demonstrates strong capability in incorporating diverse external perspectives and comprehensively understanding both our business environment and the Retail sector to inform effective decision making.
- Ability to identify strategic issues, synthesise information and present recommendations in a clear and structured manner.
- Ability to communicate effectively and influence at the highest level of the business, forming strong working relationships that allow you to support as well as hold to account
- Ability to see the bigger picture & connect the dots across multiple projects/parts of the business.
- Demonstrated expertise and commitment to the development of colleagues
- IT fluent across Microsoft applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
Desirable
- Best practice Project Management certification (e.g. APM, Agile, MSP or Lean Six Sigma)
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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).
