Staff Software Engineer - Java - Digital & Payments

Working across the payments teams as a Staff Engineer at Sainsbury's, you will promote engineering excellence, enable senior engineers to succeed, and influence direction within your respective business community. You will build deep, collaborative relationships within your teams and peers, providing technical mentorship and defining technical standards and tests for the recruitment pipeline. Your role will involve being a technical point of contact for risks and issues, guiding engineering vision across your teams, and ensuring the adoption of technical standards. Working alongside Engineering Managers, you will cultivate safe, high-performance cultures within your teams and contribute to the wider senior engineering community. As a Staff Engineer, you will utilise your programming language expertise and experience in software design and implementation to develop high-quality solutions and embed secure CI / CD practices. Working across development teams, you will lead the design and development of large-scale services, real-time streaming and batch data pipelines, infrastructure, or connectivity solutions that enable customers to pay safely by card, credit, nectar or gift card, with minimal friction. Working closely with stakeholders, you will analyse data to identify potential design and infrastructure flaws and manage the fix. You will explore emerging trends, including understanding how AI will reshape engineering practices, helping us adopt tools and approaches that enhance productivity, code quality, and innovation. In addition to technical mastery, you will demonstrate a deep understanding of the retail business and agile engineering practices, and you will have a passion for technology.

Who you are

• As a Staff Engineer at Sainsbury's Tech, you are a curious, highly experienced and influential technology leader passionate about engineering excellence and innovation. Your deep technical expertise in designing and operating distributed systems enables you to shape solutions that align with best engineering practices and principles. You enjoy building transparent, collaborative relationships within your teams and across the organisation, and driving the adoption of technical standards. Your experience with agile practices fosters a high-performance engineering culture, strengthens engineering teams, and ensures technology delivery at scale. With your ability to mentor and guide engineers at all levels, you play a critical role in the recruitment process and the overall development of engineering competency within the organisation. Your dedication, forward thinking, technical mastery, and outcome-oriented mindset make you a key contributor in delivering impactful solutions and shaping the future of Sainsbury's Tech.