Engineering Manager

Retail; Greater London; On-site; GBP 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Colleague discounts

Pensions

Private healthcare

Job summary

Sainsbury's is seeking an Engineering Manager in Clothing to lead a multi-skilled team and shape engineering strategy across design, build, test and operations. You will collaborate with Product, Architecture and business units to translate strategy into a deliverable roadmap, while championing modern practices and AI-enhanced engineering.

You will drive ownership, foster a culture of excellence and resilience, and ensure governance, risk management and high-quality delivery across complex

Qualifications

• Experience building and leading engineering teams, including people leadership, coaching, objective setting, performance management and developing engineering capability.
• Experience delivering complex end-to-end technology solutions, including large-scale transformation programmes.
• Strong understanding of modern software engineering practices, including APIs, event-driven and distributed architectures, cloud engineering, CI/CD, automated testing, observability, resilience, operational support, SaaS/enterprise platforms and complex data and integration landscapes.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, with the ability to communicate technical options and trade-offs to technical and non-technical audiences, work effectively with third-party technology suppliers, and maintain strong internal engineering ownership while providing structure and direction through ambiguity.
• Experience or strong practical understanding of AI and emerging technologies, including identifying opportunities to embed AI within engineering teams and technology products, and introducing AI-associated software engineering, test automation, data engineering or developer productivity capabilities.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop a multi-skilled engineering team responsible for delivering technology capabilities across the Clothing programme.
• Establish clear engineering ownership from design through build, testing, implementation and ongoing operation.
• Work closely with Product, Architecture and business teams to translate business outcomes into clear technical priorities and an executable engineering roadmap.
• Shape the engineering approach as the programme moves from Blueprinting and detailed design into delivery, ensuring solutions are scalable, maintainable, secure and operationally resilient.
• Build, coach and develop engineers, creating an inclusive environment that encourages ownership, collaboration, learning and high performance.
• Take end-to-end ownership of engineering outcomes across the programme, ensuring dependencies across applications, integrations, data, testing and operational services are understood and actively managed.
• Lead through influence across internal engineering teams and strategic technology partners, providing clear technical leadership and ensuring engineering accountability remains within Sainsbury’s.
• Champion strong engineering practices including automation, CI/CD, observability, automated testing, secure engineering, API and event-driven design and effective service management.
• Drive a strong quality culture, ensuring testing, operability, resilience and non-functional requirements are considered from the beginning rather than towards the end of delivery.
• Identify opportunities where emerging technologies, automation and AI could simplify existing processes or create new capabilities for Clothing.
• Manage multiple engineering priorities and dependencies while maintaining focus on the outcomes that matter most to customers and the business.
• Contribute to engineering workforce planning, recruitment and capability development as the Clothing engineering organisation grows.
• Manage relevant initiative-level budgets and supplier engineering activity, ensuring investment is aligned to agreed outcomes.
• Ensure appropriate governance, engineering standards, risk management and operational controls are embedded throughout delivery.

Skills

Engineering leadership

End-to-end delivery

APIs & event-driven

Cloud engineering

CI/CD

Observability

AI in engineering

Stakeholder management

Tools

SaaS/enterprise platforms

Job description

Why join us

Joining Sainsbury's Tech means becoming part of an inclusive and driven team that is passionate about creating innovative solutions. As an Engineering Manager within Clothing, you will play a key role in establishing and leading the engineering capability supporting the transformation of our Clothing planning and supply chain technology.

This is an opportunity to help shape something from an early stage. You will work across Product, Engineering, Architecture, Data, Integration, Testing, Business teams and strategic technology partners to translate the Clothing strategy into scalable, resilient and maintainable technology. You will have the opportunity to challenge existing ways of working and explore how we can do things differently, including how AI, automation and modern engineering practices can improve engineering productivity, decision-making and business outcomes.

You will lead talented engineers, create an environment where people can do their best work, and help establish an engineering culture focused on ownership, technical excellence, experimentation and continuous improvement. At Sainsbury's, we value collaboration, diversity, and inclusivity, and offer a supportive and inspiring environment where you can make a purposeful contribution. Join us to be a part of an organisation that fosters technical excellence and embraces the power of diversity to shape the technology landscape of a leading UK retailer.

About the team

The Clothing technology programme is transforming the capabilities that support how Sainsbury’s plans, allocates and manages Clothing across its estate. This programme will introduce new planning capabilities while integrating with a broad existing technology landscape .

You will be joining at an important stage as we commence Blueprinting and design. This provides an opportunity to influence the technology, engineering practices and team structures that will support Clothing for the long term. Working closely with our technology partners alongside Sainsbury’s engineering teams, you'll ensure we retain strong internal ownership of our architecture, engineering decisions and outcomes.

What you'll do

• Lead and develop a multi-skilled engineering team responsible for delivering technology capabilities across the Clothing programme.
• Establish clear engineering ownership from design through build, testing, implementation and ongoing operation.
• Work closely with Product, Architecture and business teams to translate business outcomes into clear technical priorities and an executable engineering roadmap.
• Shape the engineering approach as the programme moves from Blueprinting and detailed design into delivery, ensuring solutions are scalable, maintainable, secure and operationally resilient.
• Build, coach and develop engineers, creating an inclusive environment that encourages ownership, collaboration, learning and high performance.
• Take end-to-end ownership of engineering outcomes across the programme, ensuring dependencies across applications, integrations, data, testing and operational services are understood and actively managed.
• Lead through influence across internal engineering teams and strategic technology partners, providing clear technical leadership and ensuring engineering accountability remains within Sainsbury’s.
• Champion strong engineering practices including automation, CI/CD, observability, automated testing, secure engineering, API and event-driven design and effective service management.
• Drive a strong quality culture, ensuring testing, operability, resilience and non-functional requirements are considered from the beginning rather than towards the end of delivery.
• Explore and embed appropriate AI-enabled engineering practices that improve developer productivity, testing, documentation, analysis and engineering decision-making.
• Identify opportunities where emerging technologies, automation and AI could simplify existing processes or create new capabilities for Clothing.
• Manage multiple engineering priorities and dependencies while maintaining focus on the outcomes that matter most to customers and the business.
• Contribute to engineering workforce planning, recruitment and capability development as the Clothing engineering organisation grows.
• Manage relevant initiative-level budgets and supplier engineering activity, ensuring investment is aligned to agreed outcomes.
• Ensure appropriate governance, engineering standards, risk management and operational controls are embedded throughout delivery.

Who you are

• You are a passionate and experienced engineering leader with a deep understanding of engineering practises and a talent for coaching and developing teams.
• With a strong understanding of technology environments, you lead by example and inspire your colleagues, fostering a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement.
• Your technical expertise combined with your ability to prioritise and manage multiple deliveries, enables you to drive the successful development and delivery of large-scale platforms.
• You excel in making well-informed technical decisions and implementing best practises, while also managing Capex and Opex responsibilities.
• With your strong leadership and communication skills, you build strong relationships at all levels and contribute to the inclusive and diverse culture that Sainsbury's Tech values.

Essential Criteria

• Experience building and leading engineering teams, including people leadership, coaching, objective setting, performance management and developing engineering capability.
• Experience delivering complex end-to-end technology solutions, including large-scale transformation programmes.
• Strong understanding of modern software engineering practices, including APIs, event-driven and distributed architectures, cloud engineering, CI/CD, automated testing, observability, resilience, operational support, SaaS/enterprise platforms and complex data and integration landscapes.
• Strong stakeholder management skills, with the ability to communicate technical options and trade-offs to technical and non-technical audiences, work effectively with third-party technology suppliers, and maintain strong internal engineering ownership while providing structure and direction through ambiguity.
• Experience or strong practical understanding of AI and emerging technologies, including identifying opportunities to embed AI within engineering teams and technology products, and introducing AI-assisted software engineering, test automation, data engineering or developer productivity capabilities.

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 to feed the nation. The level of data, transactions and variety involved. Then you’ll realise this is a modern software engineering environment, because it has to be. We’ve made significant investment in the standards and principles that shape how we work. We iterate, learn, experiment and champion ways of working such as Agile, Scrum and XP. So you can look forward to exciting opportunities across everything from AI to reusable tech.

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).