Head of Product - Media Agency
Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits
Location: London Store Support Centre, London, EC1M 6HA
Contract type: Permanent
Business area: Sainsbury's Tech
Closing date: 15 September 2026
Requisition ID: 400078115
Head of Product, Media Agency
About the Media Agency domain
Sainsbury’s is stepping up its ambition to lead the way in the retail industry, supercharged by unparalleled investment in technology and a bold vision for the future. At the heart of this transformation is our market-leading proprietary built tools Pollen, our unified retail media platform and SIP, our customer insight tool. Both deliver first-to-market solutions that power our Nectar360 retail media and insight strategy.
As Head of Product for Media Agency, you’ll play a pivotal role in shaping the future of how brands connect with millions of customers across our ecosystem. You’ll lead the development of a cutting-edge suite of advertising and data products. Collectively these allow our clients to plan, activate, optimise and measure omnichannel campaigns in one place. Underpinning this is our rich first-party data; instore, online and off-site media activation; realtime optimisation and closed loop measurement; all powered by gen-AI based tools to build audiences, optimise creative and plan media campaigns.
This is more than a product leadership role - it’s a chance to build and scale a Media Agency network that redefines what’s possible in retail. You’ll work at the intersection of commerce, data, and media, collaborating with engineering, commercial, and marketing teams to deliver scalable, privacy-first solutions that drive measurable value for brands and agencies, enhancing the customer and client experience.
We’re looking for a product leader who brings real experience of retail media and insights - someone who understands the practicalities and nuances of ad tech, the power of data monetisation, and the commercial levers that drive growth. If you’re excited by the opportunity to influence the future of Nectar360 as it continues with it’s ambition to be market-leading, look no further.
About the Head of Product role
In Sainsbury’s Tech, we power the UK’s number 1 multi-channel, multi-brand retailer. Our Product teams are made up of inspired and multi-discipline individuals who are empowered to solve hard problems in ways our customers and colleagues love and which serve the needs of our business.
Heads of Product play a critical leadership role at Sainsbury’s and are expected to create, drive and deliver their vision for their relevant product domain to support our overall business strategy.
To land that, this role needs to be able to partner closely with senior stakeholders and be comfortable defining and interpreting relevant metrics to prioritise roadmaps - supporting and challenging your team and your business partners. Commercially astute, you can balance ROI against desirability, viability, feasibility and longevity of a Product. You’ll be very comfortable working at the pace a retail business requires, whilst balancing the challenges a scaling tech platform needs to face in to – simplification, scalability, stability, capacity, legacy.
As a leader we want you to love coaching and developing your team, setting stretching goals and giving open, honest and supportive feedback to colleagues to help them realise their full potential. You’ll thrive on delivering through your wider team.
What I need to do
- Ongoing development of the Product vision for your domain
- Lead and coach your wider team to deliver their vision of their Products, to achieve our strategic business goals.
- Ensure teams are leveraging common thinking and technologies
- Set and define outcomes and metrics for your principal area, aligned to business outcomes
- Spot opportunities in the market within your domain
- Refine and optimise within defined capital and lead through priority or capacity contention in your domain
- Establish and deliver a credible 1 year roadmap aligned to revenue goals, and set out a future 3 year vision in partnership with senior leaders
- Work across divisions to shape dependent roadmaps and features, escalating where prioritisation trade-offs are needed
- Contribute and coach better product across the division using product competency and internal framework
- Take the lead to trial and embed new practices, principles and tools
- Cultivate, develop and maintain 3rd party supplier relationships where relevant
How I will succeed
- Champion your product area, clearly communicating the experience, benefits and long-term vision to different audiences
- Lead prioritisation and clearly articulate trade-off decisions to senior stakeholders in order to maximise value and return on investment
- Understand current and future technology choices, and help teams use them effectively
- Maintain clear near-term roadmaps and full-year backlogs, managing progress, risks and blockers
- Support clear communication and resolution of live product issues
- Build strong partnerships with engineering and experience design to solve customer and business problems
- Work in partnership with business stakeholders to deliver strategic capabilities and manage constraints
- Collaborate with product leaders to drive shared outcomes and improve product management across the division
- Develop a strong Product Management team and build the craft across the community
- Set high standards, challenge constructively and help the team deliver at pace
- Contribute to and lead within the Product Community of Practice
What I need to show
- Senior experience in retail media, adtech and/or martech
- Strong commercial acumen, using ROI, market context and product value to inform prioritisation
- Customer focus, with the ability to understand customer needs, client needs and business needs. Demonstrating how you can balance these priorities and work effectively when managing competing priorities
- Experience selecting, managing and partnering with third parties to deliver strategy
- Data-driven decision making, using product metrics, business metrics and insight to prioritise effectively
- Strong product management discipline, with experience across the product lifecycle and a focus on outcomes over outputs
- Strategic vision, with the ability to create, champion and deliver a clear product direction aligned to business goals
- Technical curiosity, with the ability to translate customer and business needs into clear technology outcomes
- Creative problem solving and enthusiasm for delivering change and driving efficiency through people and technology within a growing industry
- Positive impact with internal and external audiences, building strong stakeholder advocacy
- Experience leading and developing teams, directly and cross-functionally
- Strong communication and influencing skills at all levels
- Success delivering across multiple product teams and stages of the customer journey
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.
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