<p>The Head of Technology role is critical in defining Sainsbury's technology strategy with strategic partners, ensuring technical, service, and delivery excellence across a large and diverse portfolio that touches every Sainsbury's site and colleague. This highly credible leader collaborates brilliantly across Sainsbury's Tech, the wider business, and maintains executive-level relationships with our Partners, epitomising our valued behaviours while driving innovation, financial rigour, and operational excellence at scale. Accountable for a large budget and indirect management of 50+ offshore partner colleagues, this role bridges internal stakeholders, vendors, and partner engineering to deliver value-oriented data transformation and high-quality service.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>What I am accountable for</strong></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Technology Strategy</strong></p> <ul> <li>Define and lead the technology strategy within Sainsbury's Tech in collaboration with Partners, Product Management, and stakeholders at all levels, ensuring alignment with business outcomes and corporate priorities.</li> <li>Act as the pivotal bridge between internal stakeholders, vendors and partner engineering teams, ensuring constant alignment with technology strategy and seamless translation of business needs into technical delivery.</li> <li>Drive scope changes to partner contracts working closely with Supplier Relationship Management teams and stakeholders, ensuring contractual modifications deliver business value and maintain commercial rigour.</li> <li>Champion innovation across the data portfolio, identifying opportunities to leverage emerging technologies and inspiring stakeholders at all levels through thought leadership and strategic vision.</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Leadership</strong></p> <ul> <li>Provide inspiring, motivational leadership to direct team whilst enabling an environment where 50+ offshore partner colleagues can be their brilliant best.</li> <li>Lead the evolution of direct and indirect teams toward agile ways of working, driving cultural change, removing wasteful activity, and continuously improving outcomes and value delivery.</li> <li>Foster a culture of innovation, high technical standards, and operational excellence across distributed teams spanning Sainsbury's colleagues and strategic partner organizations.</li> <li>Hire to high standards that continuously improve organizational capabilities, while rewarding, empowering, and developing top talent across the technology function.</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Financial Accountability</strong></p> <ul> <li>Maintain rigorous financial control of a large budget, ensuring spend aligns with business priorities, contract commitments, and value delivery targets.</li> <li>Identify and deliver cost optimisation opportunities in collaboration with Procurement, Product Management, and Supplier Relationship Management teams at all levels across the organization.</li> <li> <p>Drive commercial discipline in partner engagement, ensuring contractual compliance, value realization, and accountability for budget performance.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p></li> </ul> <p><strong>Technical Assurance</strong></p> <ul> <li>Provide technical assurance across the scope of strategic partner services, working with Architecture and Engineering leaders to ensure adherence to enterprise principles and standards.</li> <li>Review and approve architectural designs at enterprise level, ensuring solutions meet technical standards, security policies, and long-term strategic requirements.</li> <li>Ensure security standards and policies are adhered to through design review processes and governance frameworks, maintaining accountability for continuous improvement.</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Delivery Assurance</strong></p> <ul> <li>Define and deliver partner outcomes, maintaining rigour around operational processes, KPI performance, and accountability to senior stakeholders at all levels across the business.</li> <li>Lead capacity management for change in partnership with strategic partners and Product Management, ensuring focus on highest-return priorities aligned with budget and corporate objectives.</li> <li>Ensure successful delivery of supplier services into Sainsbury's, tracking external dependencies and impacts at enterprise level and cross-domain where required.</li> <li>Drive value-oriented change and high-quality service delivery through leadership of technical, delivery, and service management across partner relationships.</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Service Management</strong></p> <ul> <li>Lead vendor management including relationships with Partners across Sainsbury's Tech, ensuring service quality, contractual compliance, and strategic alignment.</li> <li>Manage the quality and integrity of all services provided by engineering teams, ensuring performance meets agreed SLAs and user expectations.</li> <li>Track problems, audit items, and risks through to closure, liaising with senior internal audit teams and partners to maintain compliance and operational excellence.</li> <li>Champion quality and performant service provision, contributing to broader initiatives outside functional areas of responsibility and driving service improvement at scale.</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>What I need to know</strong></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Essential</strong></p> <ul> <li>Significant and in-depth experience working with large-scale third-party technology suppliers and managing complex partner relationships</li> <li>Broad industry knowledge of infrastructure technologies, service management, and delivery management at enterprise scale</li> <li>Good grounding in technology and software delivery including system design, software development, infrastructure management, or delivery management</li> <li>Extensive experience in technology leadership roles managing large budgets and complex portfolios</li> <li>Proven track record demonstrating strong commercial acumen and delivering financial value</li> <li>Substantial experience managing offshore and nearshore delivery teams at scale (50+ colleagues)</li> <li>Proven experience identifying and delivering continuous improvement through innovation, commercial optimization, or service enhancement</li> <li>Strong track record building and maintaining executive-level relationships with strategic technology partners</li> <li>Experience operating at senior stakeholder level including engagement with executive leadership</li> <li>Demonstrable success leading cultural change, agile transformation, and operational improvement initiatives</li> <li>Strong leadership skills with ability to apply these at scale to colleagues in matrix structures both inside and outside the organization</li> <li>Ability to coach others to make customer-oriented decisions and share stories of exceptional customer service</li> <li>Balanced leadership style with ability to 'say it in the room,' celebrate success, and call out opportunities for improvement</li> <li>Track record hiring to high standards and developing high-performing teams</li> <li>Knowledge of data engineering, AI/ML platforms, and emerging technology trends</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Desirable</strong></p> <ul> <li>Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and cloud transformation initiatives</li> <li>Understanding of retail technology landscape and e-commerce platforms</li> <li>Experience with global technology partnerships and multi-vendor governance</li> <li>Background in technology transformation or large-scale change programs</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>What I need to show</strong></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Own it</strong></p> <ul> <li>Take full accountability for the budget, partner performance, and delivery outcomes, ensuring commitments are met and maintaining transparent communication with Director and executive stakeholders when challenges arise</li> <li>Drive contractual compliance and commercial rigour across partner relationships, holding vendors accountable for performance while ensuring Sainsbury's obligations are met with integrity</li> <li>Hold yourself and teams to high standards, ensuring technical quality, operational excellence, and service delivery meet enterprise expectations even under pressure or competing priorities</li> <li>Don't walk past underperformance or inefficiency, addressing partner, team, or process issues promptly and decisively, escalating appropriately while driving resolution at pace</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Make it better</strong></p> <ul> <li>Continuously optimise your portfolio for cost, performance, quality, and business value, using data-driven insights to identify and deliver improvements that strengthen Sainsbury's capabilities</li> <li>Improve the experience for internal stakeholders and partner teams by simplifying processes, removing blockers, and creating clarity that enables teams to deliver value efficiently</li> <li>Spot opportunities to innovate across the portfolio and partner relationships, championing adoption of emerging technologies and practices that deliver competitive advantage for Sainsbury's</li> <li>Challenge wasteful activity and complexity, driving cultural change toward more agile ways of working and eliminating processes that don't add value while maintaining necessary governance</li> </ul> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><strong>Be human</strong></p> <ul> <li>Collaborate brilliantly up, down, and across Sainsbury's Tech and the wider business, building trusted relationships with senior leaders, partners, and teams through empathy, transparency, and reliability</li> <li>Inspire and motivate direct teams and 50+ partner colleagues, creating an environment where people can be their brilliant best and feel valued regardless of employment structure</li> <li>Communicate with impact to diverse audiences from executive stakeholders to engineering teams, adapting your style to build understanding, alignment, and trust at all levels</li> <li>Epitomize Sainsbury's valued behaviours in all interactions with strategic partners, representing the brand with professionalism, respect, and integrity while maintaining executive-level relationships and partnership quality</li> </ul>