Head of Buying - Grocery (12m FTC)

About the team

Our Commercial Trading team brings together buying expertise and cross-functional category partners to create a compelling offer for Sainsbury's customers. This is a senior leadership role within the category, working with the Director of Category and leading a team of Buyers to turn customer insight, market dynamics and commercial opportunities into clear plans and measurable results.

More about the role

As Head of Buying, you will own the performance of a substantial part of the category P&L. You will set the buying and selling plan, shape range, pricing and promotional decisions, and lead complex supplier negotiations. You will balance long-term category strategy with detailed commercial delivery, responding quickly as customer needs, trends and market conditions change.

Day to day, you will create and execute the annual customer plan, build productive and mutually beneficial supplier relationships, maintain appropriate contractual governance and allocate resources across your team. You will also increase the profile of the category across Sainsbury's, bring colleagues together around a compelling proposition and support wider category leadership. Your impact will be seen in customer value, availability, profitability, sustainable outcomes and the capability of the team you lead.

More about you

You will bring current experience of delivering significant commercial outcomes in a buying or trading environment, including ownership of P&L performance and complex supplier negotiations. You can move confidently between strategic thinking and practical execution, using analysis, customer understanding and commercial judgement to make timely decisions across competing priorities.

You will be an inclusive and visible leader who can coach Buyers, set clear direction and create the conditions for people to perform and develop. You will be comfortable influencing senior and executive stakeholders, working through ambiguity and leading cross-category activity. Experience across different categories, using data or automation to improve outcomes, and managing budgets would be valuable, but the essential requirements are set out below.

Essential Criteria

• Strong P&L ownership and a measurable record of commercial delivery
• Strong end-to-end buying and trading experience
• Leadership of complex, high-value supplier negotiations, ideally with experience of working with large branded suppliers
• Capability to lead and develop of a high-performing team
• Ability to translate customer insight into a commercially compelling proposition
• Strategic thinking combined with strong attention to executional detail
• Advanced analytical capability and sound commercial judgement
• Senior-level influencing, communication and cross-functional leadership

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 65% of salary, depending on how we perform (in cash and shares).

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, and we provide private healthcare. 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. You'll also receive a company car cash allowance unless you are going to travel 10,000 business miles in your role, then you'll be able to choose a car. 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 www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).