Head of Product - GM Buy, Order & Fulfil
Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: London Store Support Centre and Home, London, EC1M 6HA
Contract type: Fixed-Term Assignment
Business area: Sainsbury's Tech
Closing date: 30 July 2025
Requisition ID: 400007328
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.
Please note - This is a 12 month FTC
In a nutshell
Reimagine what it means to buy from Britain’s most trusted brands.
At Argos, we’ve always been a bit ahead of the curve. From the iconic catalogue to game-changing click-and-collect, we’ve shaped how the UK shops for decades. Today, our mission is even bolder: to make every buying experience, whether at Argos, Tu or Habitat, not just seamless, but remarkable.
We’re looking for a Head of Product for Buy, Order & Fulfil across our General Merchandise digital channels - a visionary product leader to drive the future of our online checkout, order and fulfilment experiences and technology, the transactional core that underpins Argos, Tu and Habitat, all from a single, unified code base.
This is where buying meets brilliance.
You’ll lead the teams that make sure every customer interaction, from tapping “Add to basket” to the moment a parcel lands in their hands, feel effortless, reliable and fast. And you’ll do it at serious scale:
• 1M+ daily product searches
• Multi-brand checkout supporting 3 of the UK’s most recognised retailers
• Tens of millions of orders a year
• Home delivery, store collection, and new flexible fulfilment journeys
But this isn’t just about running a great checkout. It’s about reinventing what’s possible.
We’re aggressively growing our range and deepening our relevance by embracing stockless models, partnering with suppliers to offer more choice without holding physical inventory. You’ll be key to building the product experiences and systems that make that work: surfacing new inventory, integrating third-party fulfilment, and managing new complexities in order management and returns, all while keeping the experience clean and seamless.
You’ll also lead across three core product domains:
• Checkout and Account: Frictionless, high-performing journeys across mobile, desktop and app
• Order Management: Smart orchestration of inventory and orders across every channel
• Fulfilment: Blending Sainsbury’s logistical scale with new models to deliver faster, more flexible fulfilment
You’ll thrive here if you:
• Love complexity and have experience operating platforms at scale
• Are a systems thinker with empathy for customers and sharp commercial instincts
• Have led multiple product teams and know how to coach, inspire, and challenge
• Know when to sweat the detail and when to ship and learn
• Have experience with multi-channel fulfilment, stocked/stockless, home delivery, click and collect (bonus points!)
Why this matters: Argos isn’t just a retailer. It’s a platform - and now that platform powers not only Argos but Tu and Habitat too. In this role, you’ll shape a shared commerce backbone used by millions, and extend our reach well beyond what our shelves can hold.
This is product at its most meaningful. You’ll be solving real customer problems, building for massive scale, and creating new capabilities that will define how our brands grow in the next decade.
Join us. Own the moment of conversion. Lead the systems that deliver on the promise. Help us build the future of shopping.
What I need to do:
• Lead our product management practice, developing product teams who deliver the vision of their products, and achieve our strategic business goals.
• Ownership for the roadmap and backlog which balances the development of new features, with activity to improve service stability, reduce tactical solutions and technical debt and decommission legacy tech
• Bring together and present multiple product visions within their domain into a single coherent overview.
• Ensure teams are leveraging common thinking and technologies, enabling continual opportunity exploitation and market comparison
• Set and define outcomes and metrics for their product areas.
• Aligning product visions to end to end propositions/brands
• Refine and optimise within defined capital and requests support on priority or capacity contention
• Work across divisions to shape dependent roadmaps and features, escalating where prioritisation trade offs are needed across teams.
• Build strong relationships up to DD level to engage on the visions/roadmaps for their product areas.
• Lead and coach a team of senior product managers directly within your domain.
• Contribute and coach better product across the division using product competency and internal frameworks.
• Take the lead to trial and embed new practices, principles and tools.
• Accountable for nurturing talent in the team and foster a learning culture and high trust
• Cultivate, develop and maintain 3rd party supplier relationships, supporting opportunity progress
How I will succeed:
• Be the champion for product area, determining the right level or type of material to communicate the experience, benefits and long-term vision across a variety of audiences including development teams, stakeholders at all levels, partners and external parties
• Be the arbitration and escalation point for prioritisation and trade offs within their product area to deliver the maximum value and return on capital.
• Maintain a good level of awareness, interest and understanding of the existing and future end to end technology stacks/interfaces, including communicating clearly and coaching others on where and how to develop these technologies so they work seamlessly for customers and colleagues
• Ensure that the team maintains a realistic 90-day roadmap, as well as a prioritised and estimated full year backlog, regularly communicating progress and proactively managing risks/issues to remove blockers. Support the team in understanding future risks to mitigate.
• Support communication and resolution of live product incidents and effectively prioritise, coordinate and communicate the resolution of production issues
• Maintain a highly collaborative relationship with engineering, support at all levels for teams to understand and work together to solve problems for our customers and the business
• Collaborate with the Director of Product, and other Heads of Product across the business to ensure consistency, drive overall strategic business outcomes/shared objectives, and continuously improve product management across the division
• Develop a strong team of product managers, building the competency and enhancing the craft within the community. This includes developing a culture of learning, empowerment, experimentation and collaboration
• Drive the team and their products towards the future organisation aspirations, through constructive challenge and thought leadership, fostering a culture where our customer ambition inspires the team to aim high and deliver at pace
• Contribute and lead within the the Product Community of practice
What I need to know:
• Knowledge and understanding of a retail business and the technology landscape, and how to maximise the value that products can and will add
• Understanding of Agile delivery and modern engineering team practices
• Knowledge of technical product development principles and methodologies
What I need to show:
• Commercial acumen, including understanding of the commercial drivers that determine the viability and longevity of a product, the ability to determine return on investment and use this insight to inform prioritisation, taking market context into consideration
• Customer focus, including a relentless focus on understanding, anticipating and exceeding their customers' needs and the ability to collaborate effectively with customers and stakeholders
• Data driven, including a drive for the use of product metrics to prioritise a roadmap effectively and the ability to use data and insight appropriately to make informed decisions whilst mitigating for any possible limitations and/or risks of misinterpretation
• Product processes, including the ability to adapt behaviour to all stages of the Product Lifecycle, a deep understanding of delivery approaches and when to use them, a focus on prioritisation of outcomes over outputs, the ability to motivate teams working within constraints and a drive to continually improve ways of working
• Strategic vision, including the ability to create, drive and champion a long-term product vision in line with a business strategy, the capability to anticipate the implications of how a product vision could interplay with a wide range of teams and the ability to drive collaboration with others to deliver effectively
• Technical curiosity, including the ability to translate between customer requirements and technology delivery, the desire to engage in technical discussions and challenge teams, the ability to use of a variety of techniques to develop understanding of the tech landscape and customer expectations of technology as relevant to a product or industry
• Creative problem solving, enthusiasm for delivering change through people and technology
• Ability to switch between strategic visioning and getting into the detail, being the authority in all aspects of the product area
• Creating a positive and consistent impact with internal and external audiences; excellent stakeholder management skills, ensuring senior stakeholder advocacy for your product families
• Demonstrable experience of leading and developing teams, directly and cross-functionally
• Strong communication and influencing skills across the organisation at all levels
• Success in delivering in multiple product teams across different stages of the customer journey
Resources available to me:
• Team of up to 15 Product Managers (C4 & C5 grades).
• £5m-£20 capex budget.
• Product community of practice.
• Large team of dedicated and matrixed resources.
• Learning and development within Sainsbury’s.
• Internal product expertise and co-learning opportunities within a highly collaborative environment.
What decisions I can make:
• All decisions related to delivering the roadmap for your area of products
• Product Manager resourcing across your product area
• Prioritisation and value return across the product family with multi million pound capital budget
We are committed to making Tech a place where people love to work where diverse and engaged team make a purposeful contribution. Sainsbury’s is committed to being the most inclusive retailer, and flexible working including job sharing is welcomed wherever possible. In Tech we welcome such conversations and are proud to champion a diverse and inclusive culture.
#LI-KF1
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 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 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. 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, 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).
