We're a multi-channel, multi-brand business serving millions of customers a day, with the UK's largest loyalty scheme and an ever-evolving set of digital platforms. All this equals over 1.2 billion transactions each year, presenting a volume, depth and complexity of data that few can match.
We don't think we're exaggerating when we say we have the most exciting data set in the country. And from the insights gained, we build scalable, high-performance products using cutting-edge technology that give our customers an amazing shopping experience - like our award-winning Smartshop app. In an inclusive, agile environment, you'll have the space to be curious, to experiment, and to solve real-world challenges. And you'll get to see your creations in the hands of millions of people across the UK.
Work alongside multiple teams on projects within the customer data and loyalty space where we have launched the UK's first hyper personalised offers and prices by leveraging huge amounts of behavioural data, lowering the costs of shops for our customers and building loyalty with our brands. Embrace the security and technical challenges which comes with processing of huge amounts of customer data, up-levelling teams in engineering excellence and influencing across our tech ecosystem to ensure optimal technical decision across Sainsbury's tech. And of course, enjoy being a hands-on developer who can dip into and out of teams and engineering problems where there is the most need and the biggest impact.
Through technology, we're changing the world we live in for the better. Shouldn't you?
Why join us
We're a 150+ year-old business that operates on an incredible scale. There's data from our 10 million+ Nectar users, days like Black Friday that make Argos the 3rd biggest website in the UK, and supply chain integration that gets the right products to the right locations on time, every time.
The tech we use is bang up to date (state of the art), whether we're in the cloud deploying over a 1,000 microservices into AWS, Azure & GCP or streaming billions of messages on Kafka and building event-based solutions. This is where you can broaden your technical knowledge and help solve complex problems while using your Agile skills to develop our long-lived teams. As a Staff Engineer, you'll help us bring together those complex horizontal outcomes that go beyond a single team and area. Throughout, you'll be working with engineers and 3rd parties to deliver high quality and well-designed solutions.
What you'll be doing
- Work with the Head of Engineering to set and achieve strategic goals and objectives; help evaluate and drive technical decisions and plan teams development and support.
- Work with engineers at all levels, promoting technical standards, sharing your expertise, helping them to find the best solutions while also giving them coaching and mentoring to set the teams for success and help them perform at their best. You will have flexibility to use your judgement and feedback to pick the challenges where your contribution is needed the most. you will be helping our engineers to be the best they can be.
- Work with your peers from other areas to widen your knowledge, deliver broader solutions and ensure reusability of the tech and skills across different domains and also support each other.
- In all, it's a role that will see you act as a technical backbone, a point of contact and a coach and a guide. We have plans to expand our engineering entry programs and we want you to be a big part of that too, ensuring that we recruit the best talent and constantly raise the bar.
Key Responsibilities:
- Design and implement end-to-end data solutions that align with business objectives while adhering to best practices in data management and database performance.
- Develop and maintain ETL processes, optimising them for both on-premise and cloud data sources.
- Ensure data quality by proactively monitoring and conducting observability checks and collaborating with information security teams on data security.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to address data-related challenges, ensuring the timely and accurate delivery of data solutions.
- Actively contribute to performance optimisation and enhance reusability across platforms and processes.
More about you:
- Experience in designing, deploying and maintaining large scale data or machine learning systems in the cloud
- Building clean, robustly tested, maintainable software, CICD pipelines and infrastructure
- Experience deploying, maintaining and monitoring machine learning models in production
- Experience implementing data pipelines, ETL, and database systems, with a strong expertise in cloud-based data warehouse
- Hands on experience with modern data tools, including transformation and orchestration tooling in cloud platforms such as AWS and Azure, open-source transformation libraries and event streaming platforms
- Solid grasp of data governance, security, and performance optimisation, as well as knowledge of GDPR and PII data handling principles.
- Self-starter with proven ability to work autonomously or within part of a team
What you could do in future
There's a lot of scope for widening your skills in this role, because it allows you to move into different areas, cover lots of ground and really broaden your understanding of how the business works. When you want to take the next step up, a Principal Engineer role would help you build on everything that you've already learned and achieved. Your technical understanding will still be in play, but it'll be as much about looking upwards and outwards - thinking about strategy and where we should be going and solving problems right across the technical organisation.
In return
You'll enjoy all this and more:
- Flexible working - tailored approach to balance your working from home and collaboration in the office, sensible freedom to shape your week and day working hours, offices in different locations
- Colleague discount across our brands - Sainsbury's, Argos and Habitat
- Health cover
- Holiday allowance
- Bonus scheme
- Pension plan
- Special offers on gym memberships, restaurants, holidays, retail vouchers and more
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 20% of salary (which may vary for Nectar360), 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, and we provide private healthcare. 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, 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 seewww.sainsburys.jobsfor a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).
