Why join us
Joining our General Merchandise team at Sainsbury's as a Buyer offers an exciting opportunity to contribute to our 'brands that deliver' strategy. As part of a friendly, passionate team that loves all things Buying, you will play a crucial role in achieving our ambitious growth plans and providing customers with a great range of quality products at competitive prices. We prioritise work-life balance and offer flexible working arrangements, including the option to work from home. As a Buyer, you will translate and execute category strategies, own target KPIs, foster relationships with stakeholders, and drive profitable growth. With a focus on customer-driven initiatives and a collaborative approach, you will have the opportunity to make an impact and deliver results in a dynamic and fast-paced environment. Join us and become part of a team that values your expertise and offers endless opportunities for development and success.
What you'll do
Working closely with our product development and global sourcing teams, you will support the Senior Buyer and Buying Manager in translating and executing the category strategy for a given product range to drive profitable growth. You will take ownership of buying own brand and branded ranges, ensuring a customer-focused proposition and establishing strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders to ensure the successful delivery of our strategy. Managing pricing, developing trading plans, and conducting regular store visits, you will contribute to achieving target KPIs such as sales, margin, stock, availability, digital metrics, and customer satisfaction. With your commercial awareness, passion for products, and strong analytical and numerical skills, you will drive product performance and make decisions based on customer feedback. By working collaboratively, communicating effectively, and demonstrating problem-solving skills, you will contribute to the success of our buying team and help us maintain a great work-life balance through flexible working arrangements.
Who you are
You are a highly motivated and commercially aware professional with a passion for delivering profitable growth and customer-focused strategies. With your previous buying experience, preferably in a non-food retail environment, you bring a deep understanding of market trends and suppliers to inform budgeting and trading plans. Your strong analytical and numerical skills, along with your ability to effectively communicate and collaborate with stakeholders, enable you to make data-driven decisions and drive product performance. With your problem-solving mindset, strategic vision, and ability to balance product passion with commercial acumen, you contribute to the success of our category strategy and the achievement of key KPIs. Being customer-focused and dedicated to delivering results, you thrive in a fast-paced environment and are able to bring others along to execute the strategy effectively.
We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you at Sainsbury’s. From fragrance to car care, clothing and pots and pans, our General Merchandise team delivers all the non-food items for Sainsbury’s, Habitat and Argos customers. This multi-brand environment means you get to work across most areas. You can also be a pioneer, because the team believes in being brave, iterating and learning as they go. They also develop deep connections to other departments, which opens up a lot of different career opportunities for you. What’s certain is that you’ll spend time on the shop floor to get closer to customers, and bring a broad perspective and the full support of your manager with you wherever you decide to develop next.
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 get 10% off at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat after 4 weeks. This increases to 15% off at Sainsbury’s every Friday and Saturday and 15% off at Argos every pay day. 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 10% of salary, depending on how we perform.
Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance, and you can buy additional holiday. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, pay 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. 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 for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).