Lead Data Engineer

Work alongside multiple teams on projects within the Retail and Data space. Embrace the challenges through driving tech design, up-levelling the teams, keeping tech standards high and building relations between the (domains) to ensure optimal technical decision making across wider ecosystem of Sainsbury’s tech. And of course, enjoy being hands- on developer choosing where your skills make the most difference. 

Through technology, we’re changing the world we live in for the better. Shouldn’t you?

Why join us

We’re a 150+ year-old business that operates on an incredible scale. There’s 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.

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. This is where you can broaden your technical knowledge and help solve complex problems while using your Agile skills to develop our long-lived teams.  As a Staff Engineer, you’ll help us bring together those complex horizontal outcomes that go beyond a single team and area. Throughout, you’ll be working with engineers and 3rd parties to deliver high quality and well-designed solutions.

What you’ll be doing

• Work with the Head of Engineering to set and achieve strategic goals and objectives; help evaluate and drive technical decisions and plan teams development and support.
• Work with engineers at all levels, promoting technical standards, sharing your expertise, helping them to find the best solutions while also giving them coaching and mentoring to set the teams for success and help them perform at their best. You will have flexibility to use your judgement and feedback to pick the challenges where your contribution is needed the most.  you will be helping our engineers to be the best they can be.
• Work with your peers from other areas to widen your knowledge, deliver broader solutions and ensure reusability of the tech and skills across different domains and also support each other. 
• In all, it’s a role that will see you act as a technical backbone, a point of contact and a coach and a guide. We have plans to expand our engineering entry programs and we want you to be a big part of that too, ensuring that we recruit the best talent and constantly raise the bar.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design and implement end-to-end data solutions that align with business objectives while adhering to best practices in data management and database performance.  
• Develop and maintain ETL processes, optimising them for both on-premise and cloud data sources.  
• Ensure data quality by proactively monitoring and conducting observability checks.  
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to address data-related challenges, ensuring the timely and accurate delivery of data solutions.  
• Actively contribute to performance optimisation and enhance reusability across platforms and processes.

More about you:

• Experience in designing and deploying data pipelines, ETL packages, and database systems, with a strong expertise in SQL-based technologies (T-SQL, SSIS, SSRS) and working within the Microsoft SQL Stack.  
• Familiar with modern data tools, including Azure Data Factory, Power BI, and cloud-based data lakes, along with proven proficiency in Azure and other cloud data services.  
• Strong understanding of SQL Server and the Microsoft development stack, with hands-on experience in cloud solutions using tools like Azure, Data Factory, and Fabric.  
• Background in data architecture, including work with data warehouses, data modeling techniques, tabular models, and a solid grasp of data governance, security, and performance optimisation, as well as knowledge of GDPR and PII data handling principles.  
• Proven track record of delivering high-quality data solutions within a collaborative team environment, alongside experience in implementing and operating relational databases and big data systems.  
• Expertise in database automation tools, data quality management, master data management, and Power BI integration and deployment, with a strong ability to create Power BI visualisations, dashboards, and DAX calculations.  
• Experience in a data engineering role

What you could do in future

There’s a lot of scope for widening your skills in this role, because it allows you to move into different areas, cover lots of ground and really broaden your understanding of how the business works. When you want to take the next step up, a Principal Engineer role would help you build on everything that you’ve already learned and achieved. Your technical understanding will still be in play, but it’ll be as much about looking upwards and outwards — thinking about strategy and where we should be going and solving problems right across the technical organisation.

In return

You’ll enjoy all this and more:

• Flexible working – tailored approach to balance your working from home and collaboration in the office, sensible freedom to shape your week and day working hours, offices in different locations
• Colleague discount across our brands – Sainsbury’s, Argos and Habitat 
• Health cover
• Holiday allowance 
• Bonus scheme 
• Pension plan 
• Special offers on gym memberships, restaurants, holidays, retail vouchers and more