Engineering Manager - Data Platform
Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: London Store Support Centre and Home, London, EC1M 6HA
Contract type: Permanent
Business area: Sainsbury's Tech
Closing date: 07 July 2025
Requisition ID: 400003821
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.
ASPIRE is the foundation for how data-driven decisions are made and automated at Sainsbury’s. It’s our corporate memory, democratising petabytes of one of the most valuable & exciting data assets in the UK. ASPIRE powers analytics, reporting, data science, and machine learning across the business.
It isn’t just a data platform – it’s a scalable set of capabilities that enable dozens of teams to deliver high-quality, high-impact data products.
We have three core objectives:
- Empower engineering teams to deliver robust, production-grade data products quickly and consistently.
- Democratise data to power insights & decisions for all of Sainsbury’s, and its partners, while maintaining strong governance, security, and cost control.
- Continuously innovate new ways of generating value from our data at scale.
Our tech stack is:
- Snowflake
- AWS and Azure
- dbt & Airflow (Astronomer)
- Python, Terraform, and GitHub Actions
You’ll lead the development of our Data Platform & Capabilities, setting direction, growing the team, and delivering business-critical products at pace and scale. You will:
- Define the north star in partnership with Product, Architecture, and leadership.
- Set the strategy for build vs. buy, investing internal effort where it creates true advantage.
- Lead a high-performing engineering team to deliver valuable features at high pace and quality.
- Recruit, mentor and coach your team, fostering a culture of learning, ownership, and collaboration.
- Own service quality, setting & achieving high SLAs for your users.
- Champion modern engineering practices and agile ways of working.
- Manage third-party partners to maintain high standards of delivery.
- Take ownership of a ~£1m budget and ensure value is delivered responsibly.
What you bring:
- A strong track record in software engineering leadership, ideally with experience running large-scale platforms (data or otherwise).
- Deep technical expertise in Python, Terraform, CI/CD, and cloud platforms (AWS and/or Azure).
- A clear and compelling technical vision – and the ability to bring others along with it.
- Experience leading complex, multi-stakeholder deliveries.
- A collaborative leadership style – you build strong relationships and thrive in diverse, cross-functional environments.
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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: 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.
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.
Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).
