Group Product Manager - Data, AI and ML

Job description

Sainsbury's is embarking on an exciting journey of technological investment and innovation. With significant funding, we are enhancing our capabilities to lead in data management, analytics, and platform development. Our focus is on delivering high-quality data solutions that empower our customers and end users to make informed decisions and achieve our business objectives. We are proud to boast one of the most compelling data sets in the country, leveraging insights to build scalable, high-performance products that enhance customer experiences. In our inclusive and agile environment, you will have the opportunity to be curious, experiment, and tackle real-world challenges together with your colleagues, witnessing the impact of your work on hundreds of colleagues or millions of customers across the UK.

We are seeking a talented and experienced Data Platform Product Manager to lead a diverse team of Product Managers. We welcome applicants who bring expertise in advanced data capabilities and a proven track record in leadership roles within the data domain. In this pivotal position, you will define and execute a strategic vision for Sainsbury’s data ecosystem—encompassing ingestion, storage, data dictionaries, automation tools—to support data engineers, data scientists, and analytics use cases effectively.

Your role will involve close collaboration with engineering teams and data scientists, supporting senior stakeholders, and working alongside cross-functional groups while fostering a community spirit within Sainsbury's. You should demonstrate strong interpersonal skills that enable you to understand various perspectives, together driving towards successful implementation of data platforms that align with our business goals.

If you are passionate about supporting innovation through collaboration and eager to make a meaningful impact, we would love to understand how you can contribute.

What I need to know:

You’re a dab hand at data – you understand how it can be used to influence decisions and, extra points if you’ve worked with it before for example managing data capabilities, AI or ML products and platforms.

You understand agile delivery and modern engineering practices, having worked directly with engineers, architects, and third parties, building real software.

You’ve led product teams before and are all over day-to-day product fundamentals and are as comfortable in the detail as with the bigger picture. More than that, you help coach and lead your direct reports to step on and expand their product toolkit. 

You can land messages clearly to stakeholders at all levels generating energy and driving consensus even when we’re having to make tough decisions.

You’ll support the strategy and develop specific roadmaps and backlogs for products, building in complete end to end customer experiences that deliver on agreed product metrics (OKRs)

Accountable for end-to-end delivery in Product Management for specific products with associated benefit/investment cases, ensuring activity is prioritised in line with the agreed product goals and metrics.

You’ll work closely and in collaboration with engineering, data scientist, architects and experience design to deliver outcomes, arbitrating conflicting priorities and influencing across teams. Spearheading the collective coaching effort within product and the wider business.

Lead the collaboration within both the core family team, other product teams and 3rd parties to launch new product features, maximising re-use across the business.

Evaluation of potential partner relationships; helping to identify necessary and/or desirable third-party technology to evaluate and select vendors.

You’ll support the communication and resolution of live product incidents and effectively prioritise, coordinate and communicate the resolution of production issues.

What I need to show:

You’re a people person.  you’ll build, lead, coach and motivate a team of Associate / Product / Senior Product Managers delivering a group of related products in partnership with multiple engineering squads; support them with definition of their product goals and ruthlessly prioritise to deliver on our commitments, guiding their focus as they build a vision and actionable backlog with associated benefit/investment cases.     

Pragmatism, resilience and proactivity – there’s lots to do to get under the skin of in Data AI and ML Capabilities, lots of teams to work with and opportunities to improve how we managed and handle data to support our business aspirations and automations. You need to be a self-starter to push ahead and bring the teams with you, holding people to account and building productive relationships internally and externally.

You’re dedicated to value balancing the customer, the tech and the and can articulate a compelling vision and goals for a group of products.

You are technically curious. You keep your finger on the pulse of what’s going on in the industry and are aware of key trends influencing sustainability and your team’s group of products.

You want to get stuck into our product community driving it forward and continuously, focusing on growing those around you, whilst continuously developing yourself.

Obsessed with the customer you can create compelling strategies to improve and champion our customer experience and know how to prioritise and deliver on our outcomes. 

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 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.

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).