We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work‑life balance. That’s waiting for you at Sainsbury’s. As the link between sellers and buyers, retail and head office, our retail operations team is the cog that keeps things running. With teams focused on store facing, labour, transformation, online, delivery and contact centre work, we touch almost every part of the business. It’s an incredibly fast‑paced environment where you need to pivot not just daily, but often hourly. So while we plan all we can, it’s vital that we all think outside our job descriptions and look to optimise and improve how we do everything. There’s also a real team ethos. After all, it’s people like you who are going to truly transform this part of the business.
12 month fixed term contract (parental leave cover) | Hybrid – Home / London Store Support Centre
In a Nutshell
As Head of Digital Central Trading, you’ll lead the end‑to‑end Digital Trade Plan for Food, ensuring we deliver brilliant customer experiences and commercial outcomes across key trading moments. You’ll step back from category‑specific detail to shape a cohesive, customer‑led digital plan, leading Digital Events, high‑traffic content strategy, and our Implementation function to ensure timely, accurate change across the site and app. This role is pivotal in uniting planning, digital trading, marketing, and analytics to deliver exceptional results.
What You Are Accountable For
* Defining and leading the Food Digital Trade Plan, ensuring clear visibility of key activities across quarterly planning cycles.
* Partnering with Brand Planning & Proposition to align digital activity with wider business ambitions and channel‑specific moments.
* Creating a consistent, shared approach to Category Planning with Digital Trading peers.
* Orchestrating pan‑category digital events (e.g., Easter, Christmas, Halloween) across planning, execution, design, and in‑event optimisation.
* Ensuring high‑traffic content (e.g., Homepage) delivers improved customer engagement, experience and commercial performance.
* Working with SEO, Digital Marketing and CRM teams to deliver a clear, effective traffic acquisition and retention strategy.
* Overseeing the Implementation function to ensure all site/app content changes are delivered accurately, efficiently, and on time.
* Leading Digital Trading performance for Food to Order (Occasions), ensuring commercial targets are achieved.
What You Need To Know And Show
Essential Skills & Experience
* Highly competent in web analytics, with strong experience using data to build plans and optimise performance (Adobe Analytics experience desirable).
* Previous senior‑level experience in a Trading/Commerce function within a large retail business, with deep understanding of digital performance levers.
* Experience managing homepage and high‑traffic digital content strategies.
* Strong analytical and insight‑driven mindset, able to interpret and present performance data clearly and actionably.
* Proven ability to coach, develop and inspire large teams, enabling confident decision‑making and high performance.
* Skilled at influencing stakeholders and navigating conflicting priorities across multiple business functions.
* Ability to anticipate, diagnose and resolve complex problems, removing blockers across divisions to secure the right digital outcomes.
* Excellent storytelling and communication skills, both written and verbal, able to translate strategy into clear direction.
* Demonstrates leadership behaviours: customer‑obsessed, performance‑driven, collaborative across boundaries, and committed to building fearless, high‑performing teams.
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:
Benefits
* Colleague discount: save 10% on shopping online and in‑store at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat, with potential to increase to 15% at points during the year.
* Pensions scheme, life cover, and eligibility for performance‑related bonus up to 65% of salary (cash and shares depending on company performance).
* Annual holiday allowance with option to buy an additional week's holiday; private healthcare coverage.
* Other benefits: season ticket loans, cycle‑to‑work scheme, health cash plans, salary advance, and a range of retailer discounts.
* Company car cash allowance (or choice of car if traveling 10,000 business miles).
* Employee assistance programme.
* Maternity or adoption leave up to 26 weeks’ pay; paternity leave up to 4 weeks’ pay.
Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibiity criteria may apply).
#J-18808-Ljbffr