Staff Engineer: Lead Architect & Mentor (Java/Kafka)

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.

Work alongside multiple teams on projects within the Supply Chain and Data space. Embrace the challenges through driving tech design, up-levelling the teams, keeping tech standards high and building relations between the domains to ensure optimal technical decision making across the wider ecosystem of Sainsbury’s tech. And of course, enjoy being a hands-on developer choosing where your skills make the most difference. Through technology, we’re changing the world we live in for the better.

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.

Who you are:

There’s no question that you’re an experienced and passionate engineer specialising in Java and Kafka, with both technical depth and breadth. You can take the initiative, evaluate risks and drive continuous improvement to get the best outcomes. You trust your judgement and analysis to contribute to complex decision making. But you’ll also need the ability to become part of your teams and support them by leading from experience in what they’re doing. So, you should be strong in both technical and Agile mentorship, guiding on the engineering vision as well as helping them to increase their performance. Listening and interpersonal skills will be vital to build relations and influence. Your ability to adapt and embrace the challenge will be a good help in your journey through discovering the diversity of our tech and setting a path to big ambitions and bold changes.

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:

• 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.
• 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 also have a pensions scheme and life cover.
• You may be eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 20% of salary, depending on how we perform.
• Annual holiday allowance with the option to buy additional holiday.
• Other benefits include season ticket loans, interest-free car loan of up to £10k, cycle-to-work scheme, health cash plans, pay advance, and access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers.
• Employee Assistance Programme and private healthcare.
• Up to 26 weeks’ pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks’ pay for paternity leave.

Our commitment to inclusivity:

We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer, welcoming whoever you are and wherever you work. 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.