Engineering Manager - Test/QA

Why join us

Joining Sainsbury's Tech means becoming part of an inclusive and driven team that is passionate about creating innovative solutions. As an Engineering Manager, you will play a pivotal role in leading and coaching talented engineering teams, driving the delivery of impactful solutions that drive efficiency and enhance performance across the business. With a focus on continuous improvement, you will have the opportunity to shape a world-class engineering function and contribute to the development of cutting-edge processes and technologies. At Sainsbury's, we value collaboration, diversity, and inclusivity, and offer a supportive and inspiring environment where you can make a purposeful contribution. Join us to be a part of an organisation that fosters technical excellence and embraces the power of diversity to shape the technology landscape of a leading UK retailer.

About the team

You will join Central Test, the function that drives quality across Sainsbury's, Argos and Nectar. We do three things: we provide independent assurance for material and complex change, we enable teams to build their own quality maturity, and we build the shared platforms that make high-quality delivery easier, faster and more consistent. You will lead a mixed team of manual and automation engineers and test leads, and you will help shape how we move from testing for others to engineering quality into every change.

What you'll do

• You will play a vital role in leading and enabling the delivery of technology solutions that create value, drive efficiency, and increase performance for the business.

• You will line manage and guide a multi-skilled quality and test team, ensuring they have the resources and skills to deliver end-to-end quality outcomes for products.

• You will define and own testing strategy across portfolios, aligning quality with architecture, risk and compliance.

• Your responsibilities include mentoring and coaching your team members, recruiting diverse and talented individuals, and promoting a culture of collaboration, learning, and respect.

• You will work closely with Engineering functions across Sainsbury’s Tech to define the vision and testing and quality processes, as well as providing end to end testing of multiple initiatives, deliveries and products.

• Promoting best practise for quality and testing, across our teams and initiatives.

• Additionally, you will manage initiative-level budgets, ensure adherence to processes and standards, and demonstrate positive attitudes and behaviours that contribute to a culture of excellence and inclusivity.

Who you are

• You build strong teams across manual and automation, and you grow test leads, engineers and analysts in both.

• You are a passionate and experienced engineering leader with a deep understanding of automated testing practises and a talent for coaching and developing teams.

• With a strong understanding of technology environments, you lead by example and inspire your colleagues, fostering a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement.

• Your technical expertise combined with your ability to prioritise and manage multiple deliveries, enables you to drive the successful development and delivery of large-scale platforms.

• You excel in making well-informed technical decisions and implementing best practises, while also managing Capex and Opex responsibilities, across a blended function of both on and off-shore.

• With your strong leadership and communication skills, you build strong relationships at all levels and contribute to the inclusive and diverse culture that Sainsbury's Tech values.

Essential Criteria

• Line management: You have line managed an engineering or test team, including test leads and automation engineers, with evidence of recruitment, coaching and performance management.

• Test/Quality Engineering leadership across manual and automation: You have set technical direction for teams delivering both manual and automated quality and testing.

• Enterprise or portfolio test strategy: You have defined and owned a testing or QA strategy across multiple teams, products or a portfolio.

• Automation vision and ROI: You have built or scaled a test or quality automation capability and can evidence the return, such as reduced regression time, increased coverage or lower maintenance cost.

• Quality governance and metrics: You have owned defect lifecycle, severity and escalation models, and used quality data to drive improvement across teams.

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 to feed the nation. The level of data, transactions and variety involved. Then you’ll realise this is a modern software engineering environment, because it has to be. We’ve made significant investment in the standards and principles that shape how we work. We iterate, learn, experiment and champion ways of working such as Agile, Scrum and XP. So you can look forward to exciting opportunities across 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:

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 eligibiity criteria may apply).