Head of Sustainable Diets - 12 month parental leave contract
Tesco UK · Welwyn Garden City
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Why this role matters
How close this job is to real sourcing and menu decisions.
This is a seat with formal standing over Tesco's diet-shift strategy, the plan that decides how hard, and how fast, one of the UK's largest grocers pushes customers toward plant-based protein and away from meat and dairy. The role sets targets, briefs Categories on priorities, and reports progress against public commitments, which means it has real leverage over whether "sustainable diets" stays a slogan or becomes a measurable shift in what millions of shopping baskets contain, with knock-on effects for climate, land use and health at national scale. It's a strategy and influencing role rather than a buying one, so the day-to-day lever is softer than a category buyer's, but at this scale and seniority, shaping the narrative and the metrics that categories are judged against can move volume no single supplier negotiation could. It's also a strong platform toward more directly proximate seats: category or protein strategy roles where the specification pen sits even closer to what actually gets stocked.
Where this role can take you
What this job teaches you, and the jobs it can lead to.
What you'd build
- Diet-shift strategy development
- Cross-functional stakeholder leadership
- Sustainability progress reporting
- Senior stakeholder influencing
Where it can lead
- Group Sustainability Director
- Director of Health and Sustainability
- Head of Sustainable Sourcing
Roles like these set group-wide health and sustainability strategy for a major retailer, including how far meat and dairy volumes are deliberately shifted toward plant-based alternatives across the business.
About the role
This is a 12-month parental leave cover for Tesco UK's Head of Sustainable Diets, reporting into the Group Sustainability Director as part of the Sustainability Leadership Team. The postholder builds and delivers the UK Sustainable Diets strategy and supports equivalent strategies in other group markets including ROI, CE and Booker, working closely with Categories, Customer, Insight and Comms teams. Responsibilities include developing short, medium and long-term strategy and action plans for sustainable diets alongside the wider Group Planet Plan and Health strategy; leading communication and engagement of the strategy across the business; driving diet-shift delivery plans with Health, Commercial, Customer, Insight and Comms stakeholders; influencing across the business so sustainable diets remains a priority where relevant; leading a cross-functional team groupwide to deliver the diets strategy; ensuring teams have the information and data needed to build, forecast, deliver and measure plans; reviewing and communicating progress against the strategy and against internal and external commitments; and engaging external partners such as investors, charity partners, foundations, academia, industry partners and suppliers on diet-shift strategy and progress. The role also covers an innovation pipeline and the Sustainability Reporting Manager workstream, and involves developing the team in line with Tesco's Winning Behaviours. Requirements include strong people leadership experience building and motivating high-performing teams, experience creating and delivering large-scale strategic plans with measurable business and customer outcomes, strong analytical skills using customer, market and performance data, a track record leading cross-functional teams and influencing senior stakeholders in a complex organisation, excellent communication and engagement skills, and the ability to balance strategic thinking with practical execution. The role is hybrid, full-time at 36 hours per week, based in Welwyn Garden City, and offers benefits including an annual bonus scheme of up to 45% of base salary, car cash allowance, 25 days holiday plus a personal day, private medical insurance, a retirement savings plan with employer contribution, and parental leave provisions.
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Key terms to include in your CV and cover letter
What this employer is asking for, in their words. Applications are often screened by software looking for exact phrases, so if these describe your experience, use their wording.
- sustainable diets strategy
- diet shift strategy
- cross-functional team leadership
- senior stakeholder influencing
- strategic planning
- data-driven decision making
- progress reporting
- external stakeholder engagement
- change management
- people leadership
- customer insight analysis
- sustainability communications
How to position yourself
The language that works with hiring managers for this kind of job.
Position your experience around strategy development, cross-functional influencing, and translating sustainability commitments into measurable business outcomes, Tesco will want to see you can shape a plan, not just advocate for one. Emphasise any experience with diet-shift, food-carbon, or nutrition-health framing, and be ready to speak the language of customer insight, category performance and investor-facing progress reporting, since those are the stakeholders this role serves.
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