Head of Partnership Management

We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you here at Sainsbury’s. For a FTSE business, we move incredibly fast. When we’re not leading projects, we’re supporting teams across the wider group to achieve their goals. And here, you can see the impact of your work as soon as you walk into a store, giving you a real sense of purpose and responsibility. Better still, the team around you will listen to your ideas and opinions, and you’ll have every chance to try something new. The scale and complexity of our business mean there’s always something new to learn, and we’ll support you every step of the way. We’re trusted to get on with it. So get ready to make things happen.

This role can be based from any of our UK Store Support Centres. We operate a hybrid working approach, so while there is no requirement to attend your local office a set number of days each week, there is an expectation that colleagues spend time working from both home and office locations to meet business needs, support collaboration, and build relationships. In addition, there will be an expectation to travel to our London site on average twice per month, as well as occasional international travel.

Why join us

Joining Sainsbury's as the Head of Partnership Management offers a unique opportunity to lead and shape enterprise-wide partnership management capability for one of our most strategically important supplier relationships. You will play a pivotal role in driving operational performance, governance, and improvements, while fostering trust, collaboration, and commercial discipline within the organisation. This role presents a dynamic and challenging environment where you can make a meaningful impact and contribute to the realisation of our strategic objectives.

What You'll Do

You’ll design and continuously improve the partnership management framework, lead the strategic governance rhythm, join internal teams to create shared ownership of partnership outcomes, shape reporting and analytical capability, and represent Sainsbury's with senior stakeholders internally and externally. You’ll ensure that the partnership delivers against its business case, benefits, governance, and risk expectations.

Who You Are

You have extensive experience in leading complex strategic supplier partnerships and outsourcing relationships within a matrix organisation. Your strong commercial acumen, ability to build governance frameworks, and track record of translating data into actionable insights enable you to drive performance, innovation, and sustainable value. You bring a strategic and customer-centric approach to managing major supplier relationships and delivering tangible business impact.

Essential Criteria

• Demonstrable experience leading strategic supplier partnerships in outsourced services across Business Process Operations, Managed Services and Tech, including accountability for performance, governance and delivery against agreed business outcomes.
• Evidence of using data and performance metrics to generate actionable insights.
• Proven ability to influence and manage senior Executive & board-level stakeholders, building alignment and shared ownership across multiple functions within a matrix organisation.
• Experience of acting as senior relationship lead into a strategic supplier on overall operational performance and driving improvements to business outcomes at an enterprise level.
  
  

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).