Format Development Manager
Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: London Store Support Centre and Home, London, EC1M 6HA
Contract type: Fixed-Term Assignment
Business area: Food Commercial
Closing date: 24 October 2025
Requisition ID: 3066383
Please note this is a 9 month Fixed Term Assignment
Why join us
When you join Sainsbury's as a Format Development Manager, you become part of a dynamic team that plays a pivotal role in shaping and delivering projects that directly impact our in-store customer proposition. You will have the opportunity to influence how customers shop and experience our physical store formats, contributing to our overarching strategy. With a data-driven approach, you will collaborate with various stakeholders to develop proposition briefs, set objectives, and manage projects from idea to trial delivery. Your expertise in retail operations and your ability to analyse insights will be instrumental in creating actionable business insights. At Sainsbury's, we value a strong work-life balance and offer a flexible working environment, empowering you to make a difference in our change plan while pursuing personal and professional growth.
What you'll do
As a Format Development Manager, you will play a crucial role in shaping and delivering projects that influence our in-store customer proposition. You will be responsible for driving elements of the physical commercial change program, determining how customers will shop and experience our physical store formats for the next five years and beyond. Using a data and insight-led approach, you will engage with stakeholders to support the development of proposition briefs, ensuring clear scopes, objectives, and approaches. You will manage projects through the Commercial Delivery team, closely monitoring project documentation and driving ideas to trial. Additionally, you will lead post-investment reviews, utilising analytical insights to create impactful summary documents. Building strong relationships with stakeholders, using market insights and internal analytics, and collaborating with cross-functional teams will be key to your success in delivering a successful multi-million-pound capital change plan. Your exceptional communication, analytical, and project management skills will enable you to effectively track project progress, mitigate risks, and deliver projects within agreed timelines and budgets.
Who you are
You are a dynamic professional who plays a pivotal role in shaping and delivering projects that influence our in-store customer proposition. With a deep understanding of end-to-end retail operations and a global perspective on store format development, you combine a passion for serving customers with data-driven insights to support the development of proposition briefs and drive project success. Your expertise in process management, business case development, and project delivery ensures that projects are executed on time and within budget, while your exceptional communication and influencing skills enable you to build strong working relationships with stakeholders and effectively communicate progress and propositions to cross-functional teams. With your ability to analyse multiple sources of information, solve problems, and continuously drive improvement, you contribute to the success of our multi-million-pound capital change plan and play a pivotal role in shaping the future of our physical store formats.
Essential skills:
- Project management experience required.
- Previous experience managing and prioritising a large, varied workload.
- Previous experience with stakeholder management demonstrated across all levels.
- Solid understanding of end-to-end retail operations
- Experience working in Retail
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 10% 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, 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.
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).
