PMO Lead
Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: London Store Support Centre and Home, London, EC1M 6HA
Contract type: Permanent
Business area: Sainsbury's Tech
Closing date: 26 July 2025
Requisition ID: 400007613
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.
Job title: PMO Lead
Division/Department: Portfolio
Location: Hybrid, London
Reporting to: PMO Manager or Head of PMO
In a nutshell:
This role will work within the Portfolio Office to drive the PMO function as a Service to all Programmes and change activities. The role will focus on the core deliverables of our Operating model, driving efficiencies of processes and tooling, consistency where needed and pursuing the objective of ‘just enough’ governance. This role provides analytical support across the PMO team, drawing on solid data analysis and reporting / MI skills. JQL / JIRA, Advanced XL, Confluence will be key to success in this role. Experience of Planview and / or Microstrategy would be a plus.
What I am accountable for:
• Supporting adherence to appropriate and useful delivery methodologies and gate processes to drive the ‘just enough’ governance objective
• Identifying efficiency of processes to ensure all activities add value and continual improvements identified
• Managing one or supporting multiple core PMO functions: RAIDD management, Planning, Governance, Dependencies and Reporting, ensuring services are robust, adding value and continually inspected for opportunities for improvement
• Involvement in tooling evaluation and roll out working with change enablement team to land internal changes robustly
• Supporting the provision of tooling and processes to support a full ‘end-to-end’ view of all Sainsbury’s tech strategic initiatives to improve visibility and inform decision making through the provision of actionable status information, time plans, risks and interdependencies
• Involvement in forums, ensuring the governance framework is upheld and adapted as needed
• Involved in monitoring KPI’s to measure performance and progress to plans at all levels of aggregation
• Involved in project audits, share lessons learned, and highlight key areas of interest
• Represent PMO and technology supporting other divisions with PMO best practice and set up
What I need to know:
Essential:
• Relevant degree or equivalent qualification
• Track record in programme/portfolio roles within a retail or similarly fast-paced environment, with a solid understanding of managing shifting deadlines, multiple initiatives, and critical paths
• A highly organised, process driven approach to managing key Governance and Planning artefacts
• Experienced in data analysis and report preparation
• Proficient in using PPM/portfolio management tools
• Stakeholder management
Desirable:
• Retail experience
• Experience in a PMO role
What I need to show
• A positive approach to change
• A solution-focused mindset with creativity and adaptability
• Good communication skills and the ability to navigate complex corporate governance environments
• Attention to detail
Our Valued Behaviours are our common DNA that every colleague should live by and provide the benchmark for how we deliver our goals/individual contribution, and how we relate to other colleagues in the organisation.
• Own it
Do what you say you’ll do
Don’t walk past a problem
• Make it better
Improve things for your customer
Spot opportunities to simplify
• Be human
Walk in the shoes of your colleagues and customers
Show care and respect to everyone
Support we will provide:
• Full system and process training for the role
• Wider Portfolio team for direction and guidance
• Access to personal development tools e.g. Bitesize talks, online self-development tools, internal mentoring etc
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).
