Principal Software Engineer - Commercial

Sainsbury's Supermarkets Ltd; London; On-site; GBP 60,000 - 100,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead innovation and engineering excellence. This role offers the chance to work in a dynamic environment, collaborating with talented teams to deliver scalable solutions that impact millions. You'll be at the forefront of shaping technology standards, promoting agile methodologies, and mentoring engineers. With a strong commitment to work-life balance and a supportive culture, this position promises growth opportunities and the chance to make a meaningful impact in the retail technology landscape.

Benefits

Colleague discount

Pensions scheme

Life cover

Performance-related bonus

Annual holiday allowance

Cycle to work scheme

Health cash plans

Company car cash allowance

Private healthcare

Employee assistance programme

Qualifications

• Proven track record of driving innovation and modern engineering practices.
• Deep understanding of backend languages and ecosystems.

Responsibilities

• Drive engineering excellence and enable teams to succeed.
• Shape the direction of technology standards and best practices.

Skills

Java

.Net

Golang

Node.js

Python

Kotlin

Agile methodologies

Software engineering principles

Job description

Principal Software Engineer - Commercial

Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: Holborn Store Support Centre and Home, London, EC1N 2HT
Contract type: Permanent
Business area: Sainsbury's Tech
Closing date: 18 May 2025
Requisition ID: 282889

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.

Joining Sainsbury's Tech means becoming part of an organisation that powers the UK's leading multi-channel, multi-brand retailer. As a Principal Engineer, you will play a pivotal role in driving engineering excellence and innovation within our dynamic and inclusive environment. You'll have the opportunity to work alongside talented teams, enabling engineers to succeed and shaping the direction of technology standards and best practises. With the freedom to explore, experiment, and lead the way in agile methodologies, you'll contribute to building and delivering scalable solutions that impact millions of customers. We offer growth opportunities, a supportive community of practise, and a collaborative culture that values evidence-based decision-making. Join our team and be at the forefront of shaping the future of retail technology while enjoying a work-life balance that allows you to thrive both personally and professionally.

What you'll do

As a Principal Engineer in Sainsbury's Tech, you will play a crucial role in driving engineering excellence and enabling engineers to succeed within the organisation. You will be a trusted voice in innovation, modern ways of working, and best engineering practises, influencing the direction within your respective business community. Leading by example, you will leverage your deep technical experience and expertise to enable Staff Engineers and engineering teams to deliver technology at scale. Collaborating with Senior Engineering Managers and Staff Engineers, you will guide the engineering vision across your teams, ensuring the adoption and evolution of technical standards. Additionally, you will serve as a technical point of contact and expert for risks and issues that impact your domain, tower, or family, providing measured impact assessment and prioritisation. As a technical leader, you will drive the adoption, evidencing, and curation of technology standards, while also being responsible for the shape of the engineering practise and colleague development. You will work towards evolving the engineering practise, technical standards, and principles, making data-driven decisions and driving positive outcomes. With deep expertise in your specific area of specialisation, such as software development, data, infrastructure, or network, you will lead the design and development of scalable and high-performance solutions using cutting-edge technologies. Overall, you will be instrumental in shaping the engineering culture, driving technical maturity, and ensuring effective and efficient delivery within Sainsbury's Tech.

Who you are

As a Principal Engineer within Sainsbury's Tech, you are a highly skilled and influential technology leader with a deep understanding of engineering principles and practises. You have a proven track record of driving innovation, promoting modern ways of working, and implementing best engineering practises. With your extensive technical experience and expertise, you enable our engineering teams to deliver exceptional technology solutions at scale. As a trusted voice in the organisation, you shape the direction of innovation and technology adoption, while also fostering a collaborative and inclusive work environment. Your ability to build strong relationships, mentor engineers at all levels, and advocate for the adoption of agile methodologies sets the foundation for engineering excellence. Through your strategic planning and ownership of technical standards and practises, you contribute to the continuous growth and transformation of our engineering practise to meet the evolving needs of the business.

As a Principal Engineer you'll need to be able to understand the ecosystems around the things that developers are coding in order to be able to make the best recommendations and set the right technical direction; therefore you'll need a deep understanding of a backend language/s such as Java, .Net, Golang, Node.js, Python and Kotlin etc.

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 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 additional holiday. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, 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. 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, 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).