Data Science Manager

At Sainsbury’s, data sits at the heart of how we operate, innovate and serve our customers. Our Data & Analytics team is building a technically advanced, commercially focused and impactful capability, powering our Next Level Strategy and helping to create a Sainsbury’s powered by industry leading AI algorithms. We use data, technology and advanced analytics to drive better decisions across the business, from forecasting and optimisation to experimentation, personalisation and machine learning. With one of the richest retail datasets in the UK and a portfolio spanning Sainsbury’s, Argos, Habitat and Nectar, the opportunity to innovate is huge. Here, you’ll tackle complex challenges at scale, create measurable impact and grow quickly alongside brilliant colleagues. People who thrive with us combine business understanding, technical expertise and curiosity, with a natural instinct for problem-solving. Join us and help shape the future of retail through data and AI.

In Customer Data Science (part of the Data Science Hub), we build the systems behind personalised customer decisioning – from customer segmentations to offer optimisation. We impact millions of customers, bringing them value and earning their loyalty. This team already personalises all of the offers you see in the Nectar app, but now we’re growing in ambition and scale. We aim to personalise everything that matters – offers, online recommendations, digital experiences, communications. And we aim to achieve this using our incredible data asset, our rich customer understanding, and state of the art machine learning and AI. Our ambition to go further and deeper with personalisation means we need a new team, focused mainly on customers shopping online and with SmartShop. You’ll initially incubate within an existing Customer Data Science team, until you have the people, strategy, and domain knowledge to operate independently. This is not a hands‑off role – although a large part of your time will be dedicated to building a high-performing team, you’ll also be expected to lead by example.

What You’ll Do

• Lead a high performing team
• Manage your team – develop their skills, remove their blockers, and protect them from outside noise.
• Provide regular feedback to individuals in your team and align them to stretching goals.
• Create a happy but ambitious team – recognise achievements and manage performance with high but fair expectations.
• Ensure that your team is always delivering against Sainsbury’s strategic objectives, and always be able to answer what value your team has delivered.

Set us up for success

• Work with our Product colleagues to ensure we are working on the right things and have the right ways of working.
• Form strong relationships with technical and business teams, championing the value of personalisation in delivering our business goals.
• Iterate on our short-term and long-term strategies.
• Prototype high-value work, demonstrating commitment to generating value and to technical best practices.
• Ensure the value of your team’s work is measured and communicated.
• Align to best practice across modelling, experimentation, deployment, and model lifecycle management.

Be an enthusiastic member of our community

• Become the recognised data science representative for your domain, bringing new ideas for future approaches to personalisation.
• Understand how our business really works, including by supporting our stores during peak trading periods.
• Actively contribute to our vibrant Data and Analytics community of over 800 colleagues, providing a view on new techniques and approaches that can drive positive change in wider teams.

Who You Are

We’re looking for a highly motivated self-starter – someone who fixes problems and creates value without micromanagement. You need to be able to build and motivate a high-performing team.

Exceptional management

• Experience managing a high-performing team.
• Ability to manage with both care and ambition.
• Ability to get the most out of every role and every individual – constantly iterating team structures and approaches to ensure your team is generating more value, more quickly, and more sustainably.
• Ability to understand strategic objectives of varying granularities, and align your team accordingly.
• Ability to form strong relationships with teams around the business, and to influence them as the primary representative of your domain.

Value delivery

• Deep experience in Data Science roles, with evidence of solving complex problems end-to-end.
• A record of building systems which run in production, and an understanding of the value these generated.
• Experience working in an Agile way, and ability to understand the trade-off between immediate value, future value, and technical rigour.
• A strong ability to communicate ideas to audiences of varying technical background and seniority.

Data Science expertise

• Strong grounding in statistical modelling and machine learning, such as predictive modelling at scale, unsupervised learning, causal inference, experimentation, optimisation and decisioning.
• Strong understanding of the “how” behind the algorithm; ability to select the right technique for a given objective and avoid pitfalls.
• Curiosity, scepticism and attention to detail regarding data quality, samples, bias and ethics.

Production‑grade design

• Extensive programming ability across Python and strong ability to use SQL, with a proven experience of developing complex solutions in a corporate environment.
• Solid understanding of working with production codebases, such as version control, CI/CD, and batch processing.
• Practical experience working on cloud‑based ML platforms.
• Ability to see the big picture – from data ingestion to decisioning output.

Essential Criteria

• Experience managing a high-performing team.
• Extensive Data Science background.
• A record of building systems which run in production.
• A strong ability to communicate ideas to audiences of varying technical background and seniority.
• Strong grounding in statistical modelling and machine learning, including predictive modelling and recommendations/decisioning.
• Extensive programming ability across Python and strong ability to use SQL.
• Solid understanding of working with production codebases, such as version control and CI/CD.

We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer so you’ll be welcomed whatever 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 in‑store 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, 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 as 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 www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).