Job Description
Store Operations focuses on giving our colleagues the right solutions, information, and insights to drive efficiency and compliance in our day-to-day operations. Our solutions are a key component to empower our colleagues, enabling them to better serve our customers. This includes providing our colleagues with a consolidated platform to access all their required tools, in-store inventory and production management solutions across Sainsbury’s and Argos that drive stock availability, reduce labour, increase sales and reduce waste. As well as our communications and compliance activity management tooling.
Heads of Engineering in Sainsbury’s Tech play pivotal roles in people, technology and delivery. Building great relationships, the Head of Engineering is trusted by business and tech leaders and is a trusted voice for technology and innovation, modern ways of working in their respective business community.
The HoE and their team will have a critical role in enabling and understanding technology at scale for the Sainsbury’s Group. With over £32B in annual turnover, 2000 locations and 100,000+ colleagues serving all categories of Retail, Heads of Engineering engage and manage stakeholders, teams and suppliers to innovate and deliver great experiences for our customers and colleagues.
Heads of Engineering are trusted leaders of leaders, structuring and organising teams to deliver at pace and foster a high-performance culture. With clear accountability and responsibility, Heads of Engineering ensure that their teams operate in an empowered, professional environment where they can be always at their best.
The HoE is responsible for the processes and path to production and deployment of change and is accountable for the live service of all products within their domain. They will have significant experience with lean and agile methodologies, applying these appropriately in accordance to the domain and technology involved, in integrating and deploying bought-in solutions.
What I need to do:
People Leadership
Provide inspiring, motivational trust to a team of technology professionals, within and outside the company, and create the environment in which those teams can be their brilliant best. Lead and mentor teams of engineers to deliver unique and differentiating products
Lead the evolution of our teams and stakeholders to ever more agile ways of working, supporting cultural change, removing wasteful activity and continually finding ways to improve outcomes and value. Foster a culture of innovation and high technical standards, whether your team is developing software, or integrating and deploying bought-in solutions
Build a strong pipeline of talent and stretching succession plans which attract, reward, empower and develop our best colleagues. Hire to high standards that continuously improve the organisation’s capabilities. Ensure the optimum balance of Sainsbury’s colleagues and third-party contracts and contractors within the team
Engagement and Communication
Communicate clearly and convincingly with technology, business and product leaders, ensuring that they are appropriately engaged in all parts of the product lifecycle, from vision and strategy to operation and decommissioning
Become known for your close understanding of your domain, proactive identification of unique technology-enabled opportunities, efficiencies, delivery excellence and clarity of communication.
Develop and maintain frictionless lines of communication between your team and others within Sainsbury’s Tech with whom collaboration is required.
Delivery
Form and support diverse technology teams, ensuring delivery and pace.
Stay abreast of technology developments to ascertain their potential for integration into your area of remit or across the wider domains and Sainsbury’s Tech organisation.
Understand technology so that you can compellingly explain, communicate any trade-offs and risks. Understand technical decisions and their risk or reward to delivery and the wider organisation.
Ensure that all new and enhanced products and platforms are released into service visibly and seamlessly, in line with overall business change plans and expectations
Own the full lifecycle of products in your area, including supporting live service and rapidly resolving issues
Governance, planning, financial and supplier management
Responsibility for managing and delivering financial budgets, partnering with key business and product teams in the annual, quarterly and continuous planning activities for the relevant products and platforms, setting clear ambitions, expectations and investment budgets for and through the financial year
Ensure that operational plans for your products are in place to support all key business events, from Black Friday, to Christmas, Easter and other seasonal peaks.
Partner with the Supplier Management team to drive value from our existing contracts and relationships and lead or support contract renewal and renegotiations
How I will succeed:
Build deep, strong, transparent and collaborative relationships within your team, your business stakeholders, their peers and with the other members of the Director of Engineering’s Leadership Team
Ensure that product priorities and outcomes are understood, aligned across retail brands and agreed between technology and business/product teams
Maintain and build on your technical excellence, logical systemic thinking and detail in decision-making
Manage a balanced portfolio of technology investments, tracking key metrics which drive the behaviours to deliver value for Sainsbury’s retail brands and by working closely with the portfolio teams; you will ensure investment costs are accurately forecast and delivered within budgets
Empower, inspire and show affinity with all skills and capabilities within your teams, and constantly champion the concept and the value of expert, stable and integrated teams
Build ever-increasing trust, resilience and customer-focus, personally and in your teams. Embed an urge for continuous improvement across all of your technology teams
Drive the ongoing stability and reduction in service incidents across your products. Partner with the Service Management team and ensure the prioritisation of investments to improve resilience and reduce complexity
What I need to know:
Instinctive understanding of the retail business and the technology landscape, and how to maximise the value that solutions can and will add to the Sainsbury’s Group strategy
Good background in building and leading delivery teams in a fast-paced, real-time environment in which IT and business success are inextricably linked. Retail background preferred but not essential
How to influence strategy, plans and actions across multiple stakeholder groups within and outside Sainsbury’s Tech
Experience in forming, inspiring and empowering cross-functional technical teams, across all technical disciplines and capabilities
Creating highly effective external partnerships and driving the delivery of our third-parties in line with Sainsbury’s priorities, measures and values
Controlling large budgets and driving maximum value, efficiency and effectiveness within those
What I need to show:
Relentless focus on delivering customer value and business outcomes at pace
Optimisation of team structure, ways of working, capability and culture to ensure delivery in as effective and efficient a way as possible
Sound judgement to make sometimes difficult and complex decisions at pace. You should be comfortable dealing with ambiguous situations and help drive toward clarity
Pragmatism, and intellectual flexibility to propose and gather support around the right solution for each problem
A passion for technology and experience in leading, motivating and directing software/technology engineering professionals and other technology teams. To continue to be relevant and up to date in the changing technology landscape
Servant leadership, helping your teams to perform at their best by ensuring that the business outcomes are clearly understood, allowing the teams to define how we deliver those outcomes within the set guidelines. You should support your teams by unblocking issues and offering strategic advice and guidance, and by balancing delegation and accountability
Results orientation, with a bias for action that is deeply informed by evidence and data-based decision-making. You will need to embed evidence-based decision-making practice throughout your team.
Resources available to me:
Direct leadership of colleagues, contractors and third-parties, across different levels, skillsets and locations
A capital investment and Opex budget and the support of Finance and Portfolio Management colleagues to ensure its effective management
What decisions I can make:
Accountability to recruit colleagues and contractors within agreed guidelines and budget
Accountability to develop talent within team and to performance manage any under-performers to Sainsbury’s Tech standards
Authority to engage suppliers and partners to define and deliver relevant products, services and outcomes, within guidelines agreed with the Supplier Management and Procurement teams
Prioritisation of investments and allocation of capital funding in partnership with product and business leaders
In return you’ll get:
Colleague discount across the multi-brands – Sainsbury’s, Argos and Habitat
Holiday allowance
Bonus scheme
Pension plan
Special offers on gym memberships, restaurants, holidays, retail vouchers and more
Across our multi-brands, we’re proud to be an equal opportunities employer that champions a diverse and inclusive culture.
If you’re reading this, even if you’re not 100% sure you’re there with your experience, we’d still love to hear from you. If you’d like to find out more head to Sainsbury's Tech