Why join us 

 

Joining Sainsbury's Tech means becoming part of a leading, multi-channel, multi-brand retailer where you have the opportunity to shape the technology that powers our business. As a Solutions Architect, you will play a vital role in defining the technical roadmap for your area of responsibility, collaborating with engineering teams to design innovative products and services. We foster an agile and empowered work culture that encourages collaboration, innovation, and continuous learning. As part of our inclusive and diverse team, you will have the chance to influence the overall technical architecture, contribute to cloud-native designs, and drive the adoption of cutting-edge technology principles. Join us to make a purposeful contribution, be part of a dynamic and inclusive environment, and embrace the exciting challenges of transforming the retail industry. 

 

About the team  

 

As a Solutions Architect at Sainsbury’s, you will guide the design and delivery of our innovative Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning platform, collaborating with a multi-disciplinary engineering team to ensure robust, scalable, and effective solutions. 

 

What you'll do 

 

As a Solutions Architect at Sainsbury's Tech, you will play a crucial role in planning and defining the technical roadmap for your responsible capability areas.  Architect robust, scalable, and secure ML solutions, balancing build versus buy decisions to maximise business value and ensure cost-effectiveness.  Define and champion the technical vision and best practices for AI & ML Engineering across Sainsbury’s Tech, sharing expertise and promoting collaboration within the architecture community of practice.  Working closely with multiple engineering teams, you will shape and design new products and services that align with the overall architecture.   Your focus will be on creating cloud-native designs for complex projects, along with evolution of Sainsbury’s ML Ops platform on Microsoft Azure, supporting the entire machine learning lifecycle—from data sourcing and feature engineering through to model training, deployment, and real-time serving.  Collaborating with Senior Engineering Managers, you will develop and communicate the technical architecture, roadmap, and strategy for your areas of responsibility.   Define and champion the technical vision and best practices for AI & ML Engineering across Sainsbury’s Tech, sharing expertise and promoting collaboration within the architecture community of practice.  You will influence teams within your domain to prioritise and build components that add the most value, while also driving the adoption of technology principles across your areas of responsibility.   Being an integral part of the architecture community of practise, you will share your expertise, contribute innovative design ideas, and promote collaboration and innovation across teams.   Success in this role requires a deep understanding of the technology landscape, staying informed about industry and retail developments, applying modern engineering techniques and cloud-native design principles, building trust and credibility, and delivering results with a focus on problem-solving and collaboration.  Maintain a deep understanding of the technology landscape, staying informed about industry trends and retail developments, and applying modern engineering techniques and cloud-native design principles to solve complex technical problems.  Influence teams to focus on building components that deliver maximum value, driving the adoption of cutting-edge technology principles throughout the organisation. 

Build trust and credibility by delivering results through problem-solving, collaboration, and innovative design ideas, contributing actively to Sainsbury’s inclusive and diverse engineering culture. 

 

Who you are 

 

A passionate and experienced Solutions Architect with a deep understanding of the role AI & ML plays in retail success.  A strategic technical expert with hands-on experience in ML Engineering & DevOps, delivering and operating large-scale platforms.  Skilled in cloud architecture (Azure or AWS a plus), data pipelines, stream processing, and real-time analytics.  A champion of modern engineering practices, bringing cutting-edge tools and methodologies to improve team efficiency and innovation.  You possess a comprehensive understanding of the technology landscape and stay updated on the latest developments in architecture frameworks and modern engineering practises, particularly in the context of cloud-native design.  With your strong influencing and communication skills, you are able to collaborate effectively with multiple stakeholders, including product managers and engineering teams, to shape and deliver innovative solutions that align with the overall architectural vision.  Your ability to think holistically and consider multiple viewpoints allows you to come up with creative solutions to complex technical problems.  As a driven individual, you constantly strive for self-improvement and actively contribute to the inclusive and diverse culture of Sainsbury's Tech. 

 

Essential Criteria

Translating enterprise reference architectures into concrete designs to deliver in Azure at scale. Demonstrable experience delivering at least one data/analytics (Ideally ML) solution on Azure in an enterprise environment. Experienced designing secure Azure solutions. Experience designing monitoring and observability for distributed systems on Azure

 

Nice to have

Experience with Azure Machine Learning or equivalent ML platforms Exposure to GenAI / Azure AI / Azure OpenAI or similar LLM platforms, including safe serving and cost/latency considerations.

 

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