A&R Assistant

A&R Assistant

Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits Location: Coventry Store Support Centre – Ansty Park and Home, Coventry, CV7 9RD Contract type: Permanent Business area: Logistics Closing date: 22 September 2025 Requisition ID:

We believe in providing meaningful work and achieving a real work/life balance. Here, you\’ll find both. Our Supply Chain team is the engine room for getting thousands of products from farms and factories to our millions of customers every day. We leverage insight and data to anticipate customer needs, ensuring they get what they want, when they need it. You\’ll be part of a team that is data-driven and judgement-focused, always the first to identify and address any issues or ambiguities. A culture of collaboration, customer obsession, and continuous improvement drives us to deliver market-leading product availability and operational excellence, and fuels our innovation. Our Supply Chain team calls for people who champion change, are customer-obsessed, data-driven, and excel at collaborating and communicating effectively – because those people can go a very long way.

What I am accountable for

• Management of the General Merchandise replenishment systems for Sainsbury\’s stores.
• Through the effective use of allocation and replenishment systems, launch new ranges and execute promotional plans in line with the critical path.
• Ongoing management of the category demand forecasts within the replenishment system.
• Collaborate with Buying and Inbound Supply to manage the timely exit of discontinued stocks.
• Communicate with Inbound Supply and Network Planning to facilitate the flow of stock from depot to store.
• Collaborate with Inbound Supply to plan and forecast initial allocations, stock builds and seasonality to meet stock and availability targets.
• Accurately forecast weekly outbound volumes for the relevant category, capturing seasonal events, promotional activity and clearance plans, ensuring we minimise depot volume capping and maximise planned depot labour.
• Investigate and resolve systemic issues across allocation and replenishment systems, optimising store stock levels and improving availability.
• Achieve new and refit store stock builds within agreed time frames and availability targets.
• Work closely with the Retail team, conducting regular store visits and seeking feedback to develop a strong understanding of GM ranges and category stock levels, utilising insights to drive improvements.

What I need to know

• Show and understanding of Supply Chain and how various factors could impact routes to market and the customer proposition.
• Demonstrate a desire to work in Supply Chain and a passion for food/non-food retail.
• Strong communication skills that enable Business Partnership, Stakeholder Management and Cross Functional Working.
• Ability to prioritise workload, keeping up with the demand of the changing retail landscape to ensure best customer outcomes.
• Understanding of Supply Chain processes.
• MS Office Proficiency: Experience using MS Office applications (Excel, Word, Outlook).
• A diligent and thorough work ethic, with attention to detail.

What I need to show

Role model the Sainsbury\’s Valued Behaviours

• Own it
• Always do what you say you\’ll do and suggest solutions for problems as you spot them.
• Ask questions and contribute honestly to discussions and conversations.
• Prioritise your work in line with team or project goals.
• Make it better
• Willingness to try new approaches to improve and simplify.
• Embrace variety and open to opportunities to transfer your skills to new challenges
• Seek information to better understand your role and how teams around you operate
• Act on feedback you receive and give accurate and timely feedback to others.
• Be human
• Share care and respect to everyone.
• Seek opportunities to connect with others and build trusted relationships.
• Walk in the shoes of your internal and external customers, considering their needs in all you do.

LI-MS1

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 10% 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 up to an additional week\’s holiday. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, 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 see for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).