Engineering Manager - Retail Store Operations

Joining Sainsbury's Tech means becoming part of an inclusive and driven team that is passionate about creating innovative solutions. As an Engineering Manager, you will play a pivotal role in leading and coaching talented engineering teams, driving the delivery of impactful solutions that drive efficiency and enhance performance across the business. With a focus on continuous improvement, you will have the opportunity to shape a world-class engineering function and contribute to the development of cutting-edge processes and technologies. 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:

You will be leading a team playing a vital role within Sainsbury’s Retail Store Operations domain, managing in-store stock systems that ensure products are accurately sequenced and placed across stores. The team keeps critical in-store services running smoothly, as any downtime directly affects product ordering and overall store efficiency.

Our tech stack combines reliability and modern development practices. The backend is built with C# and .NET, exposing REST APIs such as the Stock Platform API and Code Control API. On the frontend, we use Next.js with Fable, powering the Colleague Hub - a central web platform that connects multiple store services through single sign-on.

We manage data using MongoDB Atlas for NoSQL storage and Azure SQL Server for Azure-hosted apps. Infrastructure runs across Bosun (AWS) and Azure, ensuring scalability and resilience. Our CI/CD pipelines automate builds, testing, and deployments, with Jira, ServiceNow, and GitHub supporting daily operations.

In stores, we deploy mobile applications on Android Zebra TC53e devices, integrated with DataWedge for seamless barcode scanning and stock management.

What you'll do:

• You will play a vital role in leading and enabling the delivery of technology solutions that create value, drive efficiency, and increase performance for the business.
• You will line manage and guide a multi-skilled engineering team, ensuring they have the necessary resources and skills to deliver end-to-end technical solutions for products.
• Your responsibilities include mentoring and coaching your team members, recruiting diverse and talented individuals, and promoting a culture of collaboration, learning, and respect.
• You will work closely with Product Managers and Engineers to define the vision and technical direction of the products, as well as manage multiple deliveries and take end-to-end ownership of your products, including change management and service management.
• Driving the development of new features, promoting best engineering practises, and advocating for agile / lean delivery methodologies are also essential aspects of your role.
• Additionally, you will manage initiative-level budgets, ensure adherence to processes and standards, and demonstrate positive attitudes and behaviours that contribute to a culture of excellence and inclusivity.

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:

• Demonstrable track record of leading engineering teams, encompassing team planning, performance management, setting objectives, conducting one-to-one meetings, developing technical roadmaps, and driving enhancements in engineering processes.
• Keen enthusiasm for promoting and integrating AI technologies within engineering teams.
• Solid technical foundation, with Scalable Distributed Systems & Backend Engineering.
• Strong grasp of API design and management, event-driven architectures, testing practices, observability and operations, database technologies.

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).