Senior Engineer - Machine Learning/AI - Python and SQL

Sainsbury's Tech - Senior Engineer Machine Learning - Hybrid Working - London based

Why join us
Joining Sainsbury's Tech as a Senior Engineer means becoming part of a leading technology organisation that powers the UK's top multi-channel, multi-brand retailer. We are a community of passionate engineers who are empowered to define and deliver through the use of technology. With a focus on continuous improvement and technical excellence, you'll have the opportunity to shape our engineering vision, drive adoption of best practises, and work with cutting-edge technologies. Not only will you contribute to innovative solutions that impact millions of customers, but you'll also be part of a progressive community that fosters growth, collaboration, and the advancement of engineering expertise. With the support and resources available, you can accelerate your professional development and enhance your skills within a dynamic, agile environment. Join us and be part of a team dedicated to making a meaningful impact within the retail industry while staying at the forefront of technological advancements.

What you'll do
As a Senior Machine Learning Data Engineer, you will play a critical role in designing, building, and maintaining data pipelines and infrastructure that enable the development and deployment of machine learning models and drive engineering excellence. You will collaborate closely with data scientists, and lead ML engineers, and software engineers to ensure data is clean, accessible, and optimised for large-scale processing and analysis. 
 
Key Responsibilities 

• Data Pipeline Development: Lead the technical direction of projects and ensure the use of Sainsbury’s best practices to the best quality.  

• Data Integration: Lead and provide expertise on Integrate data from various sources, ensuring data consistency, integrity, and quality across the entire data lifecycle. 

• Infrastructure Management: Provide guidance for the junior & Mid Data Engineers on the best practices when building and managing data infrastructure, including data lakes, warehouses, and distributed processing systems (e.g., Hadoop, Spark). 

• Data Preparation: Collaborate with data scientists to prepare and transform raw data into formats suitable for machine learning, including feature engineering and data augmentation. 

• Automation: Implement automation tools and frameworks (CI/CD) to streamline the deployment and monitoring of machine learning models in production. 

• Performance Optimisation: Optimise data processing workflows and storage solutions to improve performance and reduce costs. 

• Collaboration: Work closely with cross-functional teams, including data science, engineering, and product management, to deliver data solutions that meet business needs. 

• Mentorship: junior and mid-level data engineers and provide technical guidance on best practices and emerging technologies in data engineering and machine learning and helping to enhance their skills and career growth. 

• Knowledge Sharing and Empowerment: Promote a culture of knowledge sharing within the engineering teams by organising regular technical workshops, brown bag sessions, and code reviews.  

• Innovation and Continuous Improvement: Foster a collaborative and inclusive team environment that encourages continuous learning and improvement.  

Leadership and Communication  

• Strong leadership skills with the ability to inspire and guide team.  

• Lead scrum ceremonies as and when needed (Standup, Planning, and grooming sessions)  

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts.  

• Creating a safe and inclusive environment where all team members feel that their input is valued and are never dissuaded from speaking up or asking questions.  

 Collaborative Attitude  

• Strong team player with a collaborative approach to working with cross-functional teams within the Media Agency.  

• Open to feedback and willing to provide constructive criticism to others.  

• Be available for the team, responding within a reasonable time frame and if not possible clearly sign positing alternative contacts who can guide. 

• Building a community across Media Agency. 

• Contribute to a positive and inclusive atmosphere within the team.  

 Knowledge Sharing and Empowerment  

• Commitment to fostering a learning culture within the team and ensuring knowledge transfer across all levels.  

• Support and mentor C3s and C4s engineers by providing them opportunities to lead initiatives and contribute to the technical roadmap.  

What you need to know and show

• Education: Bachelor's degree in computer science, Data Engineering, or a related field. A Master’s or PhD is preferred. 

• Experience: 5+ years of experience in data engineering, with a focus on building and managing data pipelines for machine learning applications. 

Technical Skills 

• Strong programming skill in Python, Nodejs or Scala. 

• Expertise in SQL and NoSQL databases and Python (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Cassandra, Snowflake). 
• Strong experience with data processing frameworks (e.g., Apache Spark, Flink). 

• Hands-on experience with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure) and their data services (e.g., Snowflake, S3, BigQuery, Redshift). 

• Knowledge of machine learning frameworks (e.g., TensorFlow, PyTorch) and model deployment tools (e.g., MLflow, TensorFlow Serving). 

• Experience with containerisation and orchestration tools (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes). 

• Familiarity with version control systems (e.g., Git) and CI/CD pipelines. 

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).