Staff Software Engineer - Java - Digital & Payments
Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: London Store Support Centre and Home, London, EC1M 6HA
Contract type: Permanent
Business area: Sainsbury's Tech
Closing date: 22 January 2026
Requisition ID: 400044296
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.
Why join us
Joining the Payments team in Sainsbury's Tech as a Staff Engineer offers a rewarding opportunity to be at the forefront of building and running the technology that powers in-store and online payments in the UK's leading multi-channel, multi-brand retailer. As a trusted technology leader, you will have the chance to shape the direction of innovation, ways of working, and engineering practices. Collaborating with talented teams, you will play a vital role in delivering technology at scale and creating safe, high-performance cultures. With a focus on inclusive recruitment and colleague development, you will have the chance to shape the engineering teams and contribute to the growth and transformation of our organisation. Embracing agile methodologies and leveraging deep technical expertise, you will make a tangible impact on our cutting-edge solutions and see your contributions in the hands of millions. Join us and be part of a dynamic, collaborative, and forward-thinking team at Sainsbury's Tech.
What you'll do
Working across the payments teams as a Staff Engineer at Sainsbury's, you will promote engineering excellence, enable senior engineers to succeed, and influence direction within your respective business community. You will build deep, collaborative relationships within your teams and peers, providing technical mentorship and defining technical standards and tests for the recruitment pipeline. Your role will involve being a technical point of contact for risks and issues, guiding engineering vision across your teams, and ensuring the adoption of technical standards. Working alongside Engineering Managers, you will cultivate safe, high-performance cultures within your teams and contribute to the wider senior engineering community. As a Staff Engineer, you will utilise your programming language expertise and experience in software design and implementation to develop high-quality solutions and embed secure CI / CD practices. Working across development teams, you will lead the design and development of large-scale services, real-time streaming and batch data pipelines, infrastructure, or connectivity solutions that enable customers to pay safely by card, credit, nectar or gift card, with minimal friction. Working closely with stakeholders, you will analyse data to identify potential design and infrastructure flaws and manage the fix. You will explore emerging trends, including understanding how AI will reshape engineering practices, helping us adopt tools and approaches that enhance productivity, code quality, and innovation. In addition to technical mastery, you will demonstrate a deep understanding of the retail business and agile engineering practices, and you will have a passion for technology.
Who you are
As a Staff Engineer at Sainsbury's Tech, you are a curious, highly experienced and influential technology leader passionate about engineering excellence and innovation. Your deep technical expertise in designing and operating distributed systems enables you to shape solutions that align with best engineering practices and principles. You enjoy building transparent, collaborative relationships within your teams and across the organisation, and driving the adoption of technical standards. Your experience with agile practices fosters a high-performance engineering culture, strengthens engineering teams, and ensures technology delivery at scale. With your ability to mentor and guide engineers at all levels, you play a critical role in the recruitment process and the overall development of engineering competency within the organisation. Your dedication, forward thinking, technical mastery, and outcome-oriented mindset make you a key contributor in delivering impactful solutions and shaping the future of Sainsbury's Tech.
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).
