Senior Product Manager

Senior Product Manager – Tech Tooling

In a nutshell

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 multidiscipline individuals who are empowered to solve hard problems in ways our customers love and serve the needs of our business.

This role will involve managing a variety of tools used by our colleagues, across our technology estate. The Senior Product Manager will have had some exposure to, or experience working with SaaS applications and third party vendors. Ideally, you will have working knowledge of engineering practice and be able to translate the needs of our tech colleagues into a tooling strategy that delivers great outcomes for our colleagues and the business.

You will be responsible for managing stakeholders and owning a backlog of requests & priorities. You will work in close collaboration with other Product Managers, Engineers, the wider technology team as well as with various vendors/suppliers to ensure maximum value is delivered within our tooling budget. 

The Senior Product Manager is relentlessly focused on understanding, anticipating and exceeding stakeholder needs. In a complex area with a variety of different demands they champion the long-term vision in line with our over-arching business goals. They also work horizontally across the immediate team and the broader product and tech function to coordinate and prioritise the diverse needs of their product. They look outside of the day to day and look to bring their knowledge of best practice to define a clear set of standards, processes and a north-star vision for the space.

The role holder understands the differing requirements of their stakeholders and uses this knowledge to ultimately drive the delivery. This includes engaging in technical discussions and deciphering business value and spotting opportunities. They use business metrics to prioritise their specific product roadmap effectively and work with external third parties to bring best practice and innovative thinking to their product.

To enable success, the Senior Product Manager needs to consider the market context and is able to clearly articulate the business benefit of potential and current products, while tracking both effort and value delivery, to identify opportunities for cost reduction and additional value. 
 

What I need to do

• Supporting the tooling strategy, develop specific roadmaps and backlogs for tooling products, focusing on end user experience that delivers on core priorities.
• Own the stakeholder and business value for specific products, ensuring this aligns to the business goals.
• Accountable for end-to-end delivery in product management for specific products, ensuring activity is prioritised in line with the agreed product goals and metrics. 
• Maintain a realistic 90-day roadmap, as well as a prioritised, estimated FY backlog and regularly communicating progress, proactively managing risks/issues to remove blockers. 
• Lead the collaboration within the tech tooling team, other product teams and 3rd parties to launch new product features, maximising re-use across the division.
• Evaluate potential partner relationships; helping to identify necessary and/or desirable third-party technology to evaluate and select vendors 
• Support communication and resolution of live product incidents and effectively prioritise, coordinate and communicate the resolution of production issues.
 

How I will succeed

• Translating business and technology strategy, into a product roadmap that prioritises delivery of value and enables future business agility
• Determine the right level and choice of material to communicate the experience, benefits and long-term vision for the product across a variety of audiences including development teams, stakeholders at all levels, partners and external parties.

Working collaboratively with the technology manager on a tooling budget required to deliver the required outcomes.
• Contributing to effective prioritisation choices to deliver the maximum value and return on capital.
• Build highly collaborative relationships with engineering, working together to solve problems for our customers and the business
• Creating a positive impact with internal and external audiences, ensuring senior stakeholder advocacy for the product
• Apply data and research through sharing insight to ensure the team are focused on making the biggest difference for stakeholders and the business
• Develop a culture of learning, empowerment, experimentation and collaboration
• Own key performance indicators to measure success for the role’s contribution
• Contribute to the Product Community of practice

What I need to know

• Knowledge and understanding of a retail business and the technology landscape, and how to maximise the value that products can and will add
• Understanding of Agile delivery and modern engineering team practices
• Knowledge of technical product development principles and methodologies 

Managing stakeholders and owning a backlog of requests & priorities Experience of working with multiple vendors and implementing SaaS solutions. Knowledge of industry standard tools used across product, engineering and operations.

What I need to show

• Judgement to make sometimes difficult and complex decisions at pace, including comfortable dealing with ambiguous situations and help drive toward clarity
• Delivery of technology led change in cross-functional environments
• Focus on delivering customer value and business outcomes at pace, continuously optimising activity and ways of working to ensure that we are set up to deliver customer value 
• Passion for seeking value and helping motivate and support technology teams
• Strong communication and influencing skills, particularly at senior levels
• Creative problem solving, enthusiasm for delivering change through people and technology
• Anticipating risks and opportunities, responding to escalations at pace and supporting to find solutions
• A high level of team contribution, seek opportunities to provide input and support across the team and outside core areas of focus, role model effective collaboration
• Embrace shared responsibility and role model effective collaboration
• Influencing iterative decision making, including managing ambiguity 

Resources available to me 

• Line manager, peers and wider team
• Product competency framework and community of practice
• Learning and development opportunities
• Specific budget for products

What decisions I can make

• All decisions related to delivering the roadmap for your products
• Product Manager resourcing across your product 
• Prioritisation and value return across your product area with capital budget
 

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.

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.

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:

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