Job Description

About the Team

We don’t think we’re exaggerating when we say we work with one of the most exciting customer data sets in UK retail.

We sit within Customer & Channels and own the Digital Customer Interactions Data domain. We ingest, model and provision behavioural data from Sainsbury’s, Argos, Nectar, Habitat, Tu, SmartShop and other digital channels into our cloud data platform, enabling data-driven decision making across marketing, analytics, data science, customer insight and reporting.

Our products provide near real-time and batch digital interaction data to a wide range of business capabilities, including CRM, CDP, Nectar360, SmartShop, customer journey analytics and strategic transformation programmes. We operate at the heart of the customer data ecosystem, creating trusted data products that are consumed across multiple teams and business units.

Working in an inclusive, agile and collaborative environment, you’ll have the space to solve complex engineering challenges, influence strategic decisions and help shape how customer interaction data is used across one of the UK’s largest retailers.

What You’ll Do

As a Data Engineering Manager, you will lead a multi-skilled data engineering team responsible for delivering scalable, governed and high-performing data products within the Digital Customer Interactions domain.

You will:

• Lead a team of Data Engineers, Analytics Engineers, Architects and associated engineering specialists to deliver innovative and reliable data products that create measurable business value.
• Own product delivery end-to-end, covering both change and run activities, including service management, reliability, operational support, governance and continuous improvement.
• Drive the technical direction and engineering strategy for customer interaction data products, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, supportable and aligned with enterprise architecture standards.
• Lead engineering delivery across cloud data platforms, data ingestion frameworks, orchestration platforms, streaming solutions and modern data engineering patterns.
• Oversee the design, development and operation of data pipelines that deliver trusted customer interaction data into analytical and operational platforms across the organisation.
• Collaborate closely with Product Managers, Data Architects, Governance, Analytics, Data Science, Security and business stakeholders to shape roadmaps, prioritise demand and deliver strategic outcomes.
• Provide leadership for high-profile programmes and cross-functional initiatives, balancing strategic investment, technical debt reduction, platform sustainability and business priorities.
• Own resource planning, capacity management and prioritisation across BAU support, roadmap delivery and strategic transformation programmes, making trade-offs, risks and dependencies clear.
• Ensure robust governance, privacy, security and data quality standards are embedded across all products, including data lineage, access management, PII handling, compliance requirements and operational controls.
• Recruit, retain, coach and develop talented engineers while fostering an inclusive, collaborative and high-performing engineering culture.
• Establish and promote engineering best practice across software engineering, data engineering, DevOps, automation, testing, observability and operational excellence.
• Manage product and engineering budgets, support financial planning activities and actively seek opportunities for cost optimisation and value realisation.
• Build strong relationships with senior stakeholders and provide clear communication of delivery progress, risks, opportunities and strategic recommendations.
  

Who You Are

You are an experienced technology leader with a passion for building high-performing engineering teams and delivering trusted, scalable data products that drive meaningful business outcomes.

You have:

• Proven experience leading Data Engineering teams in complex, enterprise-scale environments.
• Strong understanding of modern data architecture, cloud platforms and large-scale data product delivery. Experience with technologies such as Snowflake, AWS, GCP, data orchestration platforms and modern ELT/ETL frameworks is highly desirable.
• Experience operating and evolving critical data platforms that support analytical, operational and customer-facing use cases.
• Strong stakeholder management skills and the ability to influence decisions across engineering, product, architecture, governance and senior business stakeholder groups.
• A track record of balancing delivery demands, technical excellence, operational stability and team wellbeing within a fast-paced environment.
• Strong commercial awareness and the ability to evaluate engineering investment decisions based on business outcomes, cost and risk.
• Experience managing engineering capacity, prioritisation and delivery dependencies across multiple concurrent initiatives.
• A strong understanding of data governance, security, privacy and compliance principles, and the ability to embed these practices into day-to-day engineering delivery.
• Excellent people leadership skills, with demonstrated success in coaching, mentoring, developing and inspiring engineering talent.
• Experience driving adoption of Agile, Lean and modern engineering practices to improve team effectiveness and delivery outcomes.
• A growth mindset, curiosity and a passion for continuous improvement, always looking for better ways to solve problems and create value for customers and colleagues.

Essential Criteria

• Proven experience leading Data Engineering teams in a complex enterprise environment, including people management, performance development, resource planning, prioritisation and delivery leadership.
• Strong technical background in modern data engineering, with experience delivering and operating large-scale data platforms, data pipelines, cloud-based data solutions and data products.
• Demonstrable experience managing end-to-end ownership of data products or platforms, balancing delivery, operational support, reliability, governance, technical debt and continuous improvement.
• Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills, with experience working across Product, Architecture, Analytics, Data Science, Security and senior business stakeholders to shape priorities and drive outcomes.
• Experience building and developing high-performing engineering teams, including coaching, mentoring, recruitment, creating an inclusive culture and driving engineering best practices.
  

Why Join Us

You’ll lead a team responsible for some of the most important customer interaction data products in the organisation, influencing how millions of customer journeys are understood, measured and improved.

The role combines people leadership, technical strategy, platform ownership and business impact, providing a unique opportunity to shape the future of customer and digital interactions data across Sainsbury’s and Argos.

Vision: Powering data-driven decisions that deliver better customer experiences and build rewarding lifetime relationships.

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).