Head of Product - Argos Instore in London

Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits

Location: London Store Support Centre, London, EC1M 6HA

Contract type: Permanent

Business area: Sainsbury's Tech

Closing date: 12 August 2026

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 to feed the nation. The level of data, transactions and variety involved. Then you’ll realise this is a modern software engineering environment, because it has to be. We’ve made significant investment in the standards and principles that shape how we work. We iterate, learn, experiment and champion ways of working such as Agile, Scrum and XP. So you can look forward to exciting opportunities across everything from AI to reusable tech.

In a nutshell, reimagine what it means to buy from Britain’s most trusted brands. At Argos, we’ve always been a bit ahead of the curve. From the iconic catalogue to game-changing click-and-collect, we’ve shaped how the UK shops for decades. Today, our mission is even bolder: to make every buying experience, whether at Argos or Habitat, not just seamless, but remarkable.

We’re looking for a Head of Product for Instore - a visionary product leader to drive the future of our Instore experiences for both customers & colleagues, the Retail core that underpins Argos and Habitat’s physical presence and market-leading immediacy collection proposition. This is where technology meets retail innovation and brilliance.

You’ll lead the teams that make sure every customer & colleague interaction, from a customer quickly collecting their latest order through to colleagues putting stock away in the most efficient places – it needs to feel effortless, reliable and fast. And you’ll do it at serious scale:

• >1k stores or collection points across the breadth of the UK
• No.1 Click and Collect retailer in the UK
• Tens of millions of orders a year
• A large collection of technologies and services from Kiosks to Tills and Colleague Apps to Core stock infrastructure

But this isn’t just about running a great Instore product team. It’s about reinventing what’s possible. We’re growing our range and deepening our relevance by embracing stockless models, partnering with suppliers to offer more choice without holding physical inventory. You’ll be key to building the product experiences and systems that make that work for Argos’ retail points of presence and technologies.

You’ll also lead across three core product domains:

• Instore Discovery & Transactions – kiosks, Pay at Browse (instore tablets) and manned tills
• Collection & Returns – kiosks, colleague capabilities
• Colleague Tooling & Apps – all the technologies supporting colleagues from the e2e management on running a successful Argos store/collection point

You’ll thrive here if you:

• Love complexity and have experience operating platforms at scale
• Are a systems thinker with empathy for customers and sharp commercial instincts
• Have led multiple product teams and know how to coach, inspire, and challenge
• Know when to sweat the detail and when to ship and learn
• Have experience with multi-channel fulfilment, stocked/stockless, home delivery, click and collect (bonus points!)

Why this matters: Argos isn’t just a retailer. It’s a platform - this role, you’ll shape a market-leading retail technology backbone used by millions, and extend our reach well beyond what our shelves can hold. This is product at its most meaningful. You’ll be solving real customer problems, building for massive scale, and creating new capabilities that will define how our brands grow in the next decade.

Join us. Own the moment of conversion. Lead the systems that deliver on the promise. Help us build the future of shopping.

What I need to do:

• Lead our product management practice, developing product teams who deliver the vision of their products, and achieve our strategic business goals.
• Ownership for the roadmap and backlog which balances the development of new features, with activity to improve service stability, reduce tactical solutions and technical debt and decommission legacy tech.
• Bring together and present multiple product visions within their domain into a single coherent overview.
• Ensure teams are leveraging common thinking and technologies, enabling continual opportunity exploitation and market comparison.
• Set and define outcomes and metrics for their product areas.
• Aligning product visions to end to end propositions/brands.
• Refine and optimise within defined capital and requests support on priority or capacity contention.
• Work across divisions to shape dependent roadmaps and features, escalating where prioritisation trade offs are needed across teams.
• Build strong relationships up to DD level to engage on the visions/roadmaps for their product areas.
• Lead and coach a team of senior product managers directly within your domain.
• Contribute and coach better product across the division using product competency and internal frameworks.
• Take the lead to trial and embed new practices, principles and tools.
• Accountable for nurturing talent in the team and foster a learning culture and high trust.
• Cultivate, develop and maintain 3rd party supplier relationships, supporting opportunity progress.

How I will succeed:

• Be the champion for product area, determining the right level or type of material to communicate the experience, benefits and long-term vision across a variety of audiences including development teams, stakeholders at all levels, partners and external parties.
• Be the arbitration and escalation point for prioritisation and trade offs within their product area to deliver the maximum value and return on capital.
• Maintain a good level of awareness, interest and understanding of the existing and future end to end technology stacks/interfaces, including communicating clearly and coaching others on where and how to develop these technologies so they work seamlessly for customers and colleagues.
• Ensure that the team maintains a realistic 90-day roadmap, as well as a prioritised and estimated full year backlog, regularly communicating progress and proactively managing risks/issues to remove blockers. Support the team in understanding future risks to mitigate.
• Support communication and resolution of live product incidents and effectively prioritise, coordinate and communicate the resolution of production issues.
• Maintain a highly collaborative relationship with engineering, support at all levels for teams to understand and work together to solve problems for our customers and the business.
• Collaborate with the Director of Product, and other Heads of Product across the business to ensure consistency, drive overall strategic business outcomes/shared objectives, and continuously improve product management across the division.
• Develop a strong team of product managers, building the competency and enhancing the craft within the community. This includes developing a culture of learning, empowerment, experimentation and collaboration.
• Drive the team and their products towards the future organisation aspirations, through constructive challenge and thought leadership, fostering a culture where our customer ambition inspires the team to aim high and deliver at pace.
• Contribute and lead within the Product Community of practice.

What I need to know:

• Knowledge and understanding of a retail business and the technology landscape, and how to maximise the value that products can and will add.
• Understanding of Agile delivery and modern engineering team practices.
• Knowledge of technical product development principles and methodologies.

What I need to show:

• Commercial acumen, including understanding of the commercial drivers that determine the viability and longevity of a product, the ability to determine return on investment and use this insight to inform prioritisation, taking market context into consideration.
• Customer focus, including a relentless focus on understanding, anticipating and exceeding their customers' needs and the ability to collaborate effectively with customers and stakeholders.
• Data driven, including a drive for the use of product metrics to prioritise a roadmap effectively and the ability to use data and insight appropriately to make informed decisions whilst mitigating for any possible limitations and/or risks of misinterpretation.
• Product processes, including the ability to adapt behaviour to all stages of the Product Lifecycle, a deep understanding of delivery approaches and when to use them, a focus on prioritisation of outcomes over outputs, the ability to motivate teams working within constraints and a drive to continually improve ways of working.
• Strategic vision, including the ability to create, drive and champion a long-term product vision in line with a business strategy, the capability to anticipate the implications of how a product vision could interplay with a wide range of teams and the ability to drive collaboration with others to deliver effectively.
• Technical curiosity, including the ability to translate between customer requirements and technology delivery, the desire to engage in technical discussions and challenge teams, the ability to use a variety of techniques to develop understanding of the tech landscape and customer expectations of technology as relevant to a product or industry.
• Creative problem solving, enthusiasm for delivering change through people and technology.
• Ability to switch between strategic visioning and getting into the detail, being the authority in all aspects of the product area.
• Creating a positive and consistent impact with internal and external audiences; excellent stakeholder management skills, ensuring senior stakeholder advocacy for your product families.
• Demonstrable experience of leading and developing teams, directly and cross-functionally.
• Strong communication and influencing skills across the organisation at all levels.
• Success in delivering in multiple product teams across different stages of the customer journey.

Resources available to me:

• Team of up to 15 Product Managers (C4 & C5 grades)
• £5m-£20 capex budget
• Product community of practice
• Large team of dedicated and matrixed resources
• Learning and development within Sainsbury’s
• Internal product expertise and co-learning opportunities within a highly collaborative environment.

What decisions I can make:

• All decisions related to delivering the roadmap for your area of products.
• Product Manager resourcing across your product area.
• Prioritisation and value return across the product family with multi million pound capital budget.

We are committed to making Tech a place where people love to work where diverse and engaged team make a purposeful contribution. Sainsbury’s is committed to being the most inclusive retailer, and flexible working including job sharing is welcomed wherever possible. In Tech we welcome such conversations and are proud to champion a diverse and inclusive culture.