ML/AI Engineer

We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you at Sainsbury’s. Think about the scale it takes for us to feed the nation. The level of data, transactions and variety it involves. Then you’ll realise that ours is a modern software engineering environment because it has to be. We’ve made serious investment into a Tech Academy and into setting standards and principles. We iterate, learn, experiment and push ways of working such as Agile, Scrum and XP. So you can look forward to awesome opportunities in everything from AI to reusable tech.

Sainsbury's Tech - ML/AI Engineer

We’re looking for a ML/AI Engineer to join our growing ML Engineering team at Sainsbury’s. You’ll work alongside data scientists, engineers, and product managers to develop, deploy, and operate robust ML systems that power key services across Sainsbury’s Digital and Retail platforms.

This role focuses on ML Ops and ML Platform development, helping us to scale and maintain production-ready ML workflows using modern cloud infrastructure and tools.

What You’ll Do

• Develop and maintain ML pipelines for training, validation, deployment, and monitoring of models.
• Support scalable ML solutions across use cases like recommendations, forecasting, and automation.
• Work with tools like Airflow, Azure ML, and FastAPI to deliver production-ready systems.
• Automate model deployment workflows using CI/CD tools (e.g. GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps).
• Contribute to the reliability, observability, and performance of the ML platform.
• Collaborate with data scientists to productionise research code into scalable services.
• Help implement monitoring, alerting, and model drift detection using tools like NewRelic, Azure Monitor, and custom logging frameworks.
• Continuously improve infrastructure using Terraform, Docker, and Fargate.
  
  

What We’re Looking For Essential Skills & Experience

• 2–4 years in ML Engineering, DevOps, or Data Engineering with exposure to ML lifecycle.
• Hands-on experience building or maintaining ML workflows or pipelines.
• Strong Python skills and experience with tools like MLflow, Scikit-learn, or PyTorch.
• Familiarity with cloud platforms (especially Azure, AWS desirable).
• Good understanding of containerisation (Docker) and orchestration (e.g. Kubernetes).
• Exposure to CI/CD tools (GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps) and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform).
• Collaborative team player with excellent communication skills.
  
  

Desirable

• Knowledge of data platforms (e.g. Snowflake, Azure Data Lake).
• Experience deploying models as APIs (FastAPI, Azure Functions).
• Understanding of monitoring, model performance tracking, and observability best practices.
• Familiarity with orchestration tools like Airflow or Azure Data Factory.
  
  

Our Tech Stack

• Languages: Python (primary), SQL, Bash
• Cloud: Azure (primary), AWS
• Tools: MLflow, Azure ML, Airflow, Docker, Fargate, FastAPI
• Data: Snowflake, Delta Lake, Redis, Azure Data Lake
• Infra & Ops: Terraform, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, Grafana, Azure Monitor
  
  

Why Join Us?

• Work on real-world, high-scale ML systems impacting millions of customers.
• Be part of a modern ML Engineering team in a supportive, cross-functional environment.
• Learn from senior engineers and grow your skills across the full ML Ops stack.
• Access to flexible working, training, and employee benefits.
  
  

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 www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).