Data Engineering Manager - ML Engineering

About the Role

At Sainsbury’s, AI & Machine Learning are at the heart of making better decisions across the business. We work in cross-functional teams – bringing together Engineering, Data Science, Product and Architecture – to build automated decisioning systems that have real impact. 

We are hiring an ML Engineering Manager to lead our Digital & Retail team. Reporting to the Head of ML Engineering, you will build & run systems that impact millions of customers online and tens of thousands of colleagues in our stores.

What you'll do

• Lead, coach, and grow a high-performing team of ML engineers. 
• Architect, build, scale and run critical ML applications – from data sourcing & feature engineering to training, deployment, real-time serving and monitoring.
• Partner with data scientists to develop & productionise models, ensuring scalability, reliability, and maintainability.
• Drive innovation, automation in collaboration with other ML Engineering teams.
• Own end-to-end delivery and operations, balancing feature development with sustainability.
• Manage delivery timelines, prioritising work and removing blockers to keep projects on track.
• Champion agile/lean delivery, oversee budgets, and DORA metrics.
• Contribute to technical strategy, roadmap planning, and hiring.

Who you are

• Proven experience in managing or leading ML engineering teams, ideally in a large-scale organisation.
• A people-first leader who can hire, develop, and retain top talent while fostering an inclusive and high-performing culture.
• Strong hands-on background in deploying machine learning models at scale, using technologies such as Pytorch, MLflow, Airflow, and Docker.
• Deep understanding of ML lifecycle challenges: feature stores, model deployment, monitoring, data drift, and retraining.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (ideally Azure), infrastructure as code (ideally Terraform) and containerisation.
• Strong communication skills and the ability to bridge technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• A champion of modern engineering practices, bringing cutting-edge tools and methodologies to improve team efficiency and innovation.
• A results-driven problem solver with strong business acumen, ensuring investments deliver maximum value.

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:
 
 Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to get 10% off at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat after 4 weeks. This increases to 15% off at Sainsbury’s every Friday and Saturday and 15% off at Argos every pay day. 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 20% 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 additional holiday. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, interest free car loan of up to £10k, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, pay 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, you will also be eligible for private healthcare too.

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 www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).