Job Description
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.
Division/Dept
Sainsbury’s Tech
Location
Various – majority Holborn
Reporting to
Group Product Manager
In a nutshell
We’re a multi-channel, multi-brand business serving millions of customers a day, with the UK’s largest loyalty scheme and an ever-evolving set of digital platforms. All this equals over 1.2 billion transactions each year, presenting a volume, depth, and complexity of data that few can match – we don’t think we’re exaggerating when we say we have the most exciting data set in the country. And from the insights gained, we build scalable, high-performance products using cutting-edge technology that give our customers an amazing shopping experience.
The customer is at the heart of everything we do, which is why we have put them at the centre of our vision, to serve and help more customers, more of the time. We do not distinguish between tech and the business, we are one team, one organisation, driving brilliant experiences across our brands.
We operate in an inclusive, agile environment. You’ll have the space to be curious, to experiment, and to solve real-world challenges in a community of inspired and multi-disciplined colleagues who are empowered to solve hard problems.
As Senior Product Manager, you’ll be focused on understanding customer needs for specific products, building and owning the product roadmap and strategy. You’ll have a flair for creative problem solving and enthusiasm for supporting delivery of change through people and technology.
Working in Agile teams, you’ll build a highly collaborative relationship with your Engineering colleagues and support in defining, delivering, and iterating features and finding creative ways to deliver great experiences for our customers.
You’ll utilise a variety of techniques to develop your understanding of the tech landscape and customer expectations of technology, using product metrics to prioritise their specific product roadmap effectively and seeking out data and insights to allow you to make informed decisions.
Specifically focusing on:
Serving millions of customers every day across hundreds of technology products for some of the largest brands in the UK, our integration transformation agenda provides a unique and extensive opportunity to reimagine the way in which we move data through our operational value streams and across our complex ecosystem. Working in close collaboration with engineering and architecture you’ll identify, prioritise and lead and build integration capability products for our engineering customers enabling them to go faster, further, more efficiently in pursuit of our business strategy.
What you need to do
As a Senior Product Manager, you will:
- Deliver products with the biggest budgets that bring significant value back to the business aligned to corporate strategic pillars.
- Be accountable for developing the vision, strategy, roadmap and backlog for your product, own the customer and business value, and make effective prioritisation choices to deliver maximum value and return on capital, ensuring we meet our corporate plan commitments.
- Be accountable for end-to-end delivery in product management, ensuring activity is prioritised in line with the agreed goals, outcomes, and metrics.
- Champion your product – determining the right level or type of material to communicate the benefits and long-term vision across a variety of audiences including development team, stakeholders at all levels, partners and external parties
- Build highly collaborative relationship with engineering and architecture to successfully navigate significant integration complexity or decisioning as you develop your product(s).
- Apply insight, data, research, technical product knowledge, to ensure your team are focused on making the biggest difference for customers and the business.
- Manage levels of risk to minimise vulnerabilities and prioritising development by working with complex and sensitive information.
- Champion and prioritise tech standards alongside product features in your and your team’s roadmaps explaining the merits to stakeholders.
- Advocate for agile software development practices with business stakeholders ensuring a good understanding of iterative value delivery.
- Monitor relevant industry trends keeping personal knowledge up to date with the latest developments and innovations pertinent to your product. Build confidence as the subject matter expert for your product, helping to guide future investment.
- Work collaboratively with engineering teams providing expertise to evaluate potential partner relationships; identifying necessary and/or desirable third-party technology to evaluate and select vendors.
- Own your product through the lifecycle, supporting communication and resolution of live product incidents and effectively prioritise, coordinate and communicate the resolution of production issues (bugs)
- Maintain a good level of awareness, interest and understanding of the existing and stacks/interfaces for your product and how to develop these so they work seamlessly for customers and colleagues
- Support communication and resolution of live product incidents and effectively prioritise, coordinate and communicate the resolution of production issues
What you need to know
- Senior level product management process.
- Proven track record of leading delivery of complex technology led change in cross-functional environments; you have shipped products at scale that customers and colleagues love.
- Strong communication and influencing skills
- Working knowledge of technology relevant to digital retail
- Solid understanding of commercial landscape
What you need to show
- Judgement to make sometimes difficult and complex decisions at pace, including comfortable dealing with ambiguous situations and help drive toward clarity
- Passion for seeking value and helping motivate and support technology teams
- Strong communication and influencing skills, particularly at senior levels
- Creative problem solving, enthusiasm for delivering change through people and technology
- Anticipating risks and opportunities, responding to escalations at pace and supporting to find solutions
- A high level of team contribution, seek opportunities to provide input and support across the team and outside core areas of focus, role model effective collaboration
- Embrace shared responsibility and role model effective collaboration
- Influencing iterative decision making, including managing ambiguity
What decisions I can make
- All decisions related to delivering the roadmap for your product(s)
- Prioritisation and significant value return across your product area with multi-million-pound investment.
Support we will provide
- Access to personal development tools including industry leader Bitesize talks, online self-development tools, and internal mentoring/coaching
- Internal product expertise and co-learning opportunities within a highly collaborative environment
- Opportunities to attend external events
- Product Competency Framework and Community of Practice
#LI-HM1
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 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.
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).