Principal Engineer - Data & AI
Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: Holborn Store Support Centre and Home, London, EC1N 2HT
Contract type: Permanent
Business area: Sainsbury's Tech
Closing date: 29 June 2025
Requisition ID: 400000821
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.
Why join us
We’re a 150+ year old business that operates on an incredible scale. A multi-channel, multi-brand business serving millions of customers a day, with the UK’s largest loyalty scheme and an ever-evolving set of digital platforms. All this equals over 1.2 billion transactions each year, presenting a volume, depth and complexity of data that few can match. With 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.
From the insights gained, we build scalable, high-performance products using cutting-edge technology that give our customers an amazing shopping experience – like our award-winning Smartshop app. In an inclusive, agile environment, you’ll have the space to be curious, to experiment, and to solve real-world challenges. And you’ll get to see your creations in the hands of millions of people across the UK.
Through technology, we’re changing the world we live in for the better. Shouldn’t you?
What you'll do
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.
As a Principal Engineer in Data & AI, you will play a pivotal role in driving engineering excellence and innovation within our dynamic and inclusive environment. You'll have the opportunity to work alongside talented teams, enabling engineers to succeed and shaping the direction of technology standards and best practises.
With the freedom to explore, experiment, and lead the way in agile methodologies, you'll contribute to building and delivering scalable solutions that impact millions of customers. We offer growth opportunities, a supportive community of practise, and a collaborative culture that values evidence-based decision-making. Join our team and be at the forefront of shaping the future of retail technology while enjoying a work-life balance that allows you to thrive both personally and professionally.
As a technical leader, you will drive the adoption, evidencing, and curation of technology standards, while also being responsible for the shape of the engineering practise and colleague development. You'll work towards evolving the engineering practise, technical standards, and principles, making data-driven decisions and driving positive outcomes. With deep expertise in data & AI, you will lead the design and development of scalable and high-performance platforms and solutions using cutting-edge technologies.
Overall, you will be instrumental in shaping the engineering culture, driving technical maturity, and ensuring effective and efficient delivery within Sainsbury's Tech.
Who you are
As a Principal Engineer within Sainsbury's Tech, you are a highly skilled and influential technology leader with a deep understanding of engineering principles and practises in the field of data & AI. You have a proven track record of driving innovation, promoting modern ways of working, and implementing best engineering practises across a population of hundreds to a thousand engineers, internal and external. With your extensive technical experience and expertise, you enable our engineering teams to deliver exceptional technology solutions at scale.
As a trusted voice in the organisation, you shape the direction of innovation and technology adoption, while also fostering a collaborative and inclusive work environment. Your ability to build strong relationships, mentor engineers at all levels, and advocate for the adoption of agile methodologies sets the foundation for engineering excellence. Through your strategic planning and ownership of technical standards and practises, you contribute to the continuous growth and transformation of our engineering practise to meet the evolving needs of the business.
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 65% of salary, depending on how we perform (in cash and shares).
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, 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. You'll also receive a company car cash allowance unless you are going to travel 10,000 business miles in your role, then you'll be able to choose a car. 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).
