In a nutshell
The Account Lead plays a key role in driving the health, performance and growth of the Marketplace by managing the day-to-day activity of the full seller portfolio. The role focuses on operational excellence, seller experience, and commercial performance, while providing direct 1:1 relationship management for a small number of priority accounts. This role ensures sellers are supported to deliver strong commercial performance, great service and compliance, and contributes to the wider Marketplace growth strategy.
What I am accountable for
1. Manage the day-to-day performance of the full Marketplace seller portfolio, monitoring KPIs including GMV, delivery accuracy, customer service and compliance.
2. Support a small group of assigned sellers through 1:1 account management, enabling their commercial and operational performance to improve consistently.
3. Identify risks and issues across the seller base (., poor performance trends, compliance breaches) and take action to resolve issues promptly through defined processes.
4. Analyse seller trading data and provide insight-driven recommendations to optimise catalogue quality, assortment, promotions, and revenue delivery.
5. Coordinate with internal teams including Seller onboarding, Customer Service and Retail Media to ensure end-to-end seller experience is smooth and well supported.
6. Guide sellers through operational best practices and performance driving initiatives to enable long-term success on the platform.
7. Prepare and deliver regular seller communication including performance updates, guidance materials and process reminders.
8. Implement continuous improvements by spotting opportunities to simplify processes and enhance Marketplace efficiency.
9. Escalate and report key issues, insights and performance trends to the Marketplace Account Manager to support strategic decision-making.
10. Champion the customer by working with sellers to enhance product quality, listings accuracy, service performance and issue resolution.
11. Act as the initial point of contact for day-to-day portfolio issues, with support from the Seller Account Manager where needed.
12. Drive broad adoption of promotional activities across the seller base to support GMV growth
Key Performance Measures:
13. GMV, revenue, and profitability performance for assigned seller portfolio
14. Seller operational performance (delivery, cancellations, returns, quality)
15. Customer satisfaction and complaints linked to seller activity
16. Assortment growth and brand/category development
17. Reduction of seller-related negative customer outcomes and operational issues
18. Seller engagement, retention, and performance improvements
What I need to know
Essential
19. Experience in account management, partner management, commercial support, operations or a similar role.
20. Understanding of marketplace dynamics (retail, eCommerce, or platform-based selling).
21. Strong analytical skills with the ability to interpret data and create actionable recommendations.
22. Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal.
23. Ability to build rapport and trusted relationships with external partners.
24. Good understanding of operational processes such as fulfilment, delivery, customer service or catalogue onboarding.
25. Highly organised, able to manage a varied workload across multiple sellers simultaneously.
Desirable
26. Experience trading on a major marketplace (., Amazon, eBay, Wayfair)
27. Knowledge of marketplace tools, seller analytics platforms, and reporting dashboards
28. Project management or process improvement experience
29. Category experience in Non-food (., Home, Electricals, Garden, Toys)
30. Experience with Retail Media solutions (., Citrus, Criteo)
We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you at Sainsbury’s. From fragrance to car care, clothing and pots and pans, our General Merchandise team delivers all the non-food items for Sainsbury’s, Habitat and Argos customers. This multi-brand environment means you get to work across most areas. You can also be a pioneer, because the team believes in being brave, iterating and learning as they go. They also develop deep connections to other departments, which opens up a lot of different career opportunities for you. What’s certain is that you’ll spend time on the shop floor to get closer to customers, and bring a broad perspective and the full support of your manager with you wherever you decide to develop next.
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 save 10% on your shopping online and instore at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat, and we regularly increase the discount to 15% at points during the year. 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 10% of salary, depending on how we perform.
Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance and you can buy up to an additional week's 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, salary 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. And if you ever need it there is also an employee assistance programme.
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 for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).