Digital Trading Lead - Food - Part Time (3 Days) - 12m FTC
Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: London Store Support Centre and Home, London, EC1M 6HA
Contract type: Fixed-Term Assignment
Business area: Retail
Closing date: 12 September 2025
Requisition ID: 400017473
We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you at Sainsbury’s. As the link between sellers and buyers, retail and head office, our retail operations team is the cog that keeps things running. With teams focused on store facing, labour, transformation, online, delivery and contact centre work, we touch almost every part of the business. It’s an incredibly fast-paced environment where you need to pivot not just daily, but often hourly. So while we plan all we can, it’s vital that we all think outside our job descriptions and look to optimise and improve how we do everything. There’s also a real team ethos. After all, it’s people like you who are going to truly transform this part of the business.
Digital Trading Lead - Food
Part time - 3 days a week
12 month Fixed Term Contract
At Sainsbury’s we believe that the customer should be at the heart of everything we do, which is why we have put digital at the centre of our vision of being there for our customers whenever, wherever and however they want. Within Digital we are one organisation, driving brilliant experiences across all our brands, operating in agile teams and working seamlessly together to make the most of the exceptional knowledge, insight and talent that we have across the Division.
Reporting to the Digital Trading Manager, the Digital Trading Lead - Food is accountable for owning and driving the performance and growth of their specific categories across digital channels, ensuring that their category strategies are brilliantly executed within our customer missions.
The dynamic and fast-moving nature of this role will require confidence, resilience, and sound commercial judgement in order to prioritise and deal effectively with fast changing scenarios and opportunities.
What you need to do:
- Daily review of performance resulting in clear actions to capitalise on opportunities and/or mitigate risks. Drive improvements in line with business targets. Responsible for conducting regular site-walks to review customer journey and check information accuracy, addressing any issues
- Responsible for the performance of their category including highlighting key actions taken, opportunities and risks and the performance narrative
- Develop and be accountable for the delivery of the category plan up to 6 months out, this includes implementation and trading of it, flagging risks and challenges to digital trading manager as needed
- Accountable for regular category optimisation utilising tools and insights to improve digital metrics and outcomes (e.g. Adobe/Glassbox/SIP)
- Accountable for owning delivery of category BAU initiatives such as range reviews, newness and cycle changes
- Responsible for proactively building relationships with commercial (buying) and other key stakeholders by attending key sessions to support execution of digital day-to-day and championing the digital channel. Attend key Category meetings, cascades, and relevant away days, sharing performance updates and helping shape the commercial strategy
- Obsess over the customer and how they shop. Work with relevant stakeholders and leverage customer data to optimise their experience of your categories
- Supporting Digital Trading Manager with supplier relationships including relevant data and insight and attending meetings as appropriate. This includes partnering with Nectar360 on retail media opportunities in your categories
- Accountable for owning key trading events and online merchandising levers.
- Where relevant, accountable for day-to-day management of a Digital Trading Assistant (DTA) in the (offshore) DOC team
- Ensure that you are working within all legal frameworks
- Responsible for deputising the Digital Trading manager where required
What you need to know and show:
- You are passionate about e-Commerce and Retail
- You have experience of building and delivering plans aligned to a strategy
- You have experience working in a fast moving and pressured environment and are able to manage projects on time and to budget
- You have strong analytical and numerical capabilities and are able to plan and make recommendations based on data and insight, ensuring clear storytelling
- Experience working with an online retailer and using online analytics
- Experience in trading positions
- You are good at influencing and negotiating, able to satisfy varying needs in the face of conflicting demands
- You have great planning and prioritising skills in order to deliver plans to deadline
- You have a high level of customer focus and are able to work with collaboratively with others
- You are able to anticipate next steps, future risks and opportunities within your area, taking actions to address them in the absence of a given structure
- You can understand the overall strategy and see the bigger picture
- You are able to take ownership of changes and have courage to try out new things at a personal and team level
- You have a balanced understanding of your style and are able to flex your style, managing messages for your team and stakeholders in order to get traction within and outside your team
- You are an effective communicator and are able to build trust to execute on an agenda
- You are committed to ongoing personal development
What decisions I can make including budget
- Shared authority in setting the strategic approach on your categories within your Business Unit
- Accountable for identifying and recommending the projects and activities that will be activated on digital platforms
Essential Criteria:
- You have strong analytical and numerical capabilities and are able to plan and make recommendations based on data and insight, ensuring clear storytelling
- Experience working with an online retailer and using online analytics
- You have a high level of customer focus and are able to work with collaboratively with others
- You are able to take ownership of changes and have courage to try out new things at a personal and team level
- You are an effective communicator and are able to build trust to execute on an agenda
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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: 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 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 up to an additional week's 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, 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. 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).
