Partnership Manager

Sainsbury's; City Of London; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Staff discount

Pensions scheme

Life cover

Bonus up to 20%

Private healthcare

Cycle to work

Job summary

Sainsbury's is hiring for a Partnerships Manager to join the team and help shape delivery across supplier relationships and multi-functional teams. The role focuses on aligning commitments, governance and performance with business strategy.

Based in the Store Support Centre network (London, Coventry, Manchester) with flexible home working and around weekly office visits to support collaboration and delivery. You’ll operate in a matrix environment and contribute to value-led change.

Qualifications

• Proven experience managing supplier partnerships, accounts, services or commercial relationships within a complex matrix organisation.
• Experience managing governance, service measures, performance reporting and improvement plans.
• Evidence of influencing senior stakeholders and using negotiation to resolve issues.
• Commercial understanding of contractual obligations, cost drivers, value opportunities and risk.
• Ability to interpret operational, financial and performance data to guide delivery.

Responsibilities

• Review service performance, investigate issues and prepare insights for partnership forums.
• Translate contractual commitments and business cases into measurable outcomes using data.
• Coordinate across supplier, technology, procurement and business service owners to drive action.

Skills

Supplier partnerships mgmt

Governance & reporting

Stakeholder influence

Commercial understanding

Data-driven decisions

Job description

This role can be based from any of our Store Support Centres (London, Coventry or Manchester), with the rest of your time working from home. There are no set office days, with office attendance and store visits expected around once a week on average to support collaboration and business needs.

Why join us

Help shape how Sainsbury's gets the most from one of its most strategically important supplier partnerships. In this newly created role within the Partnerships team, you'll connect people, services and priorities across a partnership spanning technology, outsourced business operations, HR, Finance, Data, Commercial and more. With ways of working still taking shape, you'll have the opportunity to build practical approaches that improve performance, unlock value and support innovation, including making the most of emerging capabilities such as AI. Together, this will help propel our Next Level strategy forward.

What you'll do

You'll manage defined areas of the partnership, bringing together our supplier, Technology, Procurement and business service owners to turn shared priorities and insights into action. Your focus will be on joining up activity across teams, establishing effective governance and making sure commitments, risks and improvement actions are understood and followed through. You'll work at the point where supplier relationships, operational performance and business change meet, helping people understand what change means for them, building engagement and bringing stakeholders with us as new ways of working take shape.

Day to day, you'll review service performance, investigate issues, prepare insight for partnership forums and work with senior stakeholders to agree what needs to happen next. You'll help translate contractual commitments and business cases into measurable outcomes, using operational and financial data to challenge constructively and identify opportunities for improvement. You'll help turn change into practical action, working across teams to build understanding, overcome challenges and maintain momentum. There won't be a ready-made playbook for everything, so you'll help create the structure needed to keep delivery moving while supporting longer-term efficiency, innovation and value.

Who you are

You bring experience of managing supplier partnerships, accounts, services or commercial relationships within a complex, matrix organisation. You know how to build trust while holding people to agreed commitments, influence across organisational boundaries and explain performance, risks and recommendations clearly. You can connect the detail of service delivery and contractual obligations with wider business priorities, drawing on an understanding of the services and market involved.

You're comfortable working through ambiguity, asking challenging questions and turning incomplete information into practical next steps. You take ownership, remain adaptable when priorities change and approach difficult conversations with respect. Experience in technology, outsourced business operations, managed services or transformation would be useful, as would working with offshore delivery models. Your ability to manage complex relationships, improve performance and bring teams together matters most.

Essential criteria

• Proven experience managing supplier partnerships, accounts, services or commercial relationships within a complex matrix organisation, coordinating delivery across multiple functions.
• Demonstrable experience managing governance, service measures, performance reporting and improvement plans, with evidence of following actions through to measurable outcomes.
• Evidence of influencing stakeholders across organisational boundaries, including senior stakeholders, and using negotiation and constructive challenge to resolve relationship or delivery issues.
• Demonstrable commercial understanding of contractual obligations, cost drivers, value opportunities and risk.
• Evidence of interpreting operational, financial and performance data to recommend action and prioritise delivery where information is incomplete or priorities compete.

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.

• 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 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 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, interest free car loan of up to £10k, 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.
• 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 for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).