Chris Ormerod

Currently leading Sainsbury's Groceries Online Native Apps team. As an Engineering Manager to a mixed Android / IOS team, I am proactively scaling the groups Native app capabilities and seeking continuous improvement in delivery. I have been proactive in defining a bold North Star vision for Native delivery within Sainsburys, while delivering immediate prioritised service enhancements.

There has been a significant focus on inspiration, encouraging customers to explore products outside of their usual baskets. I was able to utilise my previous experience with content and personalisation to drive this mission

As Engineering Manager, my role has many varied and challenging responsibilities.

• To provide technical experience, guidance and clear tangible deliverables to the team.
• Help define standards and push the boundaries of what can be achieved, both within the team and at a divisional level.
• Motivate, mentor and evolving the careers of a highly skilled and diverse team, including 13 direct reports.
• Be proactive in recruiting new talent. Identify the needs of the team, define processes and working closely with colleagues to identify and recruit the right candidates.
• Coordinate complex cross-team technical delivery while building key relationships within the division.
• Manage and plan budgets (£1m+). Finding opportunities to save to invest, while spotting opportunities to propose financial investment and defining the clear tangible benefits it brings.
• Maintaining supplier relationships and sourcing the right partnerships to move the team forward.

In addition to my Engineering Manager role, I was asked to support the division during a transitional period.

• Taking ownership of department budgets. Working closely with Finance to define the CAPEX forecast for the next financial year in particular. I also identified opportunities to consolidate some duplicate services and reducing costs (£100k+) by bringing services in-house.
• Working closely with the Head of Product to agree the key deliverables for the next financial year and define an initial roadmap.
• Being the main communication hub for the department, especially for the Engineering Managers and contributing to division-wide communication..
• Participating in Senior Management strategy sessions. I was able to provide practical solutions to division-wide problems, particularly around cultural and training improvements.

I was leading two E-commerce full-stack teams, Personalisation DXC and Content Experiences (CMS).

Personalisation DXC provides the interlinking services required to understand our customer fully and provide tailored content for them when confident it will enhance their shopping experience. We utilised a combination of DXC and DXP solutions, with a high performance front-end rendering service.

Content Experiences provides all facets of content delivery across multiple brands and platforms within Sainsbury's Tech. The team has developed an innovative headless content platform and a highly performant React templating service to create rich user experiences. The team is at the epicentre of the group E-commerce delivery, integrating and working closely with many stakeholders.

A key achievement was shaping the strategy to turn an isolated content service into a multi-brand, multi-platform white-label solution and applying it to consolidate all Sainsbury's brands under one platform. After this was achieved, the strategy was expanded to focus on adopting cutting edge technology to make the authoring process highly efficient and incorporating automated data driven content decisions.

As Team leader for one of two full-stack teams at Tu Clothing, I was tasked with managing the delivery of key web projects.

Key responsibilities

• Help define deliverables, strategise solutions, define documentation, create stories and help set sprint goals.
• Mentor colleagues and help onboard new team members.
• Assist the Engineering Manager with defining the roadmap.
• Work with stakeholders to define, document and deliver cross-team solutions.
• Defining the standards, improving the technical solutions and leading on the delivery of key projects.

Working on various UI apps within the Sainsbury's Tech division. I utilised modern development and testing processes to build high quality, performant code, while working in Agile environments.

Creating rich front-end applications with Node.js, Mongo DB, Jade, Stylus, HTML5 and JavaScript.

Other responsibilities included:

• Line manager to 2 junior developers.
• Providing help with budget / proposal calculations.
• Client liaison throughout projects, to lend technical advice within planning.

Responsible for leading and developing large scale web-based projects, from large corporate sites to intricate responsive applications. I was a team leader, and also represented the technology team in a client facing capacity.

Previous positions:

• Mid-weight front-end web developer
• Front-end web developer