The Head of Technology for Tooling is a critical role, accountable for ensuring that the Tooling we use in our organisation is high-quality and meets the needs of our organisation. We are looking for a Head of Technology who can lead both a direct and indirect Tooling team; defining the strategy, design, implementation, and evaluation of our Tooling solutions. We are at a pivotal point for Tooling, with a need for this individual to set the ambition and execute against this, in order for us to successfully deliver our 3-year plan. The Head of Technology must have deep technical understanding and a proven track record of influencing.

Why join us

Joining Sainsbury's Tech as the Head of Technology means being at the forefront of technology innovation in one of the UK's leading multi-channel, multi-brand retailers. As a key leader, you will have the opportunity to shape and define our technology strategy, working closely with strategic partners and internal stakeholders to drive impactful outcomes. In this role, you will provide inspirational leadership to a talented team, fostering a culture of agility, innovation, and high technical standards. With a focus on continuous improvement and delivery assurance, you will have the chance to make a real impact on our organisation, while collaborating with senior stakeholders across the business. We offer a dynamic and inclusive environment, where you can achieve your professional goals while playing a significant role in driving our technology vision forward.

What you'll do

As the Head of Technology at Sainsbury's Tech, you will play a critical role in defining the technology strategy in collaboration with strategic partners. Reporting to the Director of Engineering, you will be accountable for ensuring technical, service, and delivery standards are met across a diverse portfolio. With a focus on technology leadership, you will inspire and engage teams at all levels within the organisation through your thought leadership and innovative mindset. In this role, you will provide motivational leadership to direct reports and a team of colleagues employed through strategic partners, driving agility, cultural change, and continuous improvement. You will maintain financial control of a significant budget, provide technical assurance, and oversee the delivery of partner outcomes. Additionally, you will champion service management, vendor management, and contribute to broader initiatives while collaborating with internal stakeholders, platinum partners, and senior leaders. Your ability to make strategic decisions, drive commercial acumen, and ensure high-quality service provision will be crucial in shaping and delivering the technology strategy for Sainsbury's Tech.

Who you are

As the Head of Technology for Sainsbury's Tech, you are a highly knowledgeable and influential leader in defining the technology strategy and ensuring the delivery of technical, service, and delivery standards across a large and diverse portfolio. With your extensive experience working with large-scale third-party technology suppliers, you possess a deep understanding of infrastructure technologies, service management, and delivery management. Your strong commercial acumen, combined with your ability to identify and deliver continuous improvement, empowers you to drive innovation, foster a culture of high technical standards, and achieve exceptional results. As a balanced leader, you effectively collaborate and communicate with stakeholders at all levels, both internally and with strategic technology partners, while providing inspiring leadership to your direct team and fostering an environment that enables colleagues to excel. Your expertise, strategic thinking, and ability to make critical financial decisions contribute to the overall success of the organisation.

Qualifications

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 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 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 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, 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. 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.

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).

Responsibilities

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.