Position Overview

The Director of Store Systems & Innovation leads the strategy, modernization, and execution of enterprise store applications, ensuring alignment with business priorities and long-term goals. This role oversees the enhancement and replacement of retail systems, driving operational efficiency, compliance, and secure, reliable performance across store-facing technologies. It also leads innovation initiatives, partnering with business and IT stakeholders to evaluate emerging technologies, manage budgets, and advance a pipeline of strategic opportunities. Additionally, the Director is responsible for 24/7 operational support governance, vendor management, and serving as a key advisor in IT strategy and planning.

A Day in the Life

Technology Management, Innovation & Production Support

• Direct planning and execution of systems development activities for teams; help set the IT agenda
• Optimize organizational capability and effectiveness through continual improvement of resources using software release and maintenance techniques to reduce software defects
• Supports critical retail/store/business operations with urgency and attention to system performance, availability and quality of data flows with responsibility to help ensure the integrity and confidentiality of sales, personally identifiable information, and other sensitive data
• Ensure quality and completeness of solution (application requirements and feature design)
• Support Change Management process with business sponsors to prioritize and plan enhancement work
• Establish and meet service level agreements; monitor and optimize application performance
• Establish proactive problem prevention and risk mitigation strategies
• Own the end‑to‑end Store Technology Platform, including POS (Oracle Xstore), associate-facing applications, customer-facing store technologies, and the supporting store device and peripheral ecosystem. Establish platform standards, extension strategies, and upgrade disciplines to ensure scalability, security, and long-term maintainability while minimizing customization risk.
• Lead the strategic roadmap for Oracle Xstore, including extension governance, upgrade cadence, performance optimization, and architectural alignment with enterprise platforms. Drive modernization initiatives such as mobile‑enabled store workflows, thin‑store / serverless concepts, and resilient offline-first capabilities to support high‑volume retail operations.
• Identify, deploy, and scale practical AI-enabled capabilities within store systems and operations, including intelligent automation, predictive operational alerts, AI-assisted production support, and associate experience augmentation. Ensure AI solutions are applied responsibly, deliver measurable business value, and integrate cleanly into store workflows and 24x7 operations.
• Lead a disciplined store technology innovation pipeline—from idea intake and rapid prototyping through controlled pilots and enterprise-scale deployment. Establish clear governance, business sponsorship, success criteria, and transition-to-run models to ensure innovations deliver tangible outcomes and do not compromise operational stability.
• Own the reliability, availability, and resilience of store systems operating in a 24x7 retail environment. Champion proactive monitoring, predictive incident management, root‑cause reduction, and graceful degradation strategies. Establish metrics-driven performance management with clear accountability for uptime, recovery, and customer impact.

Organization & Talent Management

• Drive standardization, impact and alignment of resource roles and processes across the portfolio
• Ensure staffing at appropriate levels and allocations of qualified team resources to support portfolio applications and technologies by priority
• Identify and develop leadership talent for succession planning
• Conduct ongoing performance and team management activities, holding associates accountable for project deliverables, systems quality and availability, customer support commitments, alignment with objectives, and compliance with company and department policies and expectations
• Responsible for budgets, capital and expense plans, and financial forecasts for resources, software, peripherals, services and related assets within the portfolio

Strategy & Business Relationship Management

• Operate with a product-oriented mindset, treating store systems as evolving business products rather than projects. Act as a trusted technology advisor to Store Operations, Loss Prevention, Merchandising, and Finance, balancing innovation, risk, and prioritization while driving outcomes aligned to enterprise goals.
• Lead business meetings and participate in management steering committees as required
• Develop and implement continuous improvement processes across the groups through frequent project reviews and business partner feedback
• Ensure application capabilities are meeting business needs and acting as an agent of change to drive technology innovation across the organization
• Educate and influence business partner decisions surrounding the store applications portfolio
• Maintain knowledge on retail industry standards and regulatory requirements impacting portfolio applications, and ensure technology strategies are developed to drive compliance and corporate value.
• Build and manage strategic partnerships with software vendors, system integrators, and emerging technology providers to accelerate innovation, optimize commercial outcomes, and influence future product roadmaps—particularly within the Oracle retail ecosystem, Payments, and store technology landscape.

#LI-BS1

You'll Come With

Education:

• B.S. degree in computer science, business systems or related technical field, or equivalent experience

Experience:

• Relevant applications management experience, seasoned IT leader experienced in leading successful implementation of multi-million dollar projects in complex matrixed organization
• Minimum of 6 years of experience
• Demonstrated experience in successfully managing complex organizational initiatives involving multiple functions and multiple business areas. Includes the identification and articulation of problems, influencing decision-making process as well as delivery of expected results

Skills and Abilities: 

• Strong organizational skills to prioritize tasks under time constraints; diplomacy and ability to deal effectively with people
• Experience in leading multidiscipline, high-performance work teams/groups; ability to lead projects and project team members to successful goal achievement
• Demonstrated competency in developing efficient and effective solutions to diverse and complex business problems; able to present these solutions to senior management using business language
• Ability to build and maintain strong customer relationships; act as a trusted advisor to the business
• Strategic/Systems Thinking: Understands the connections and relationships across functions and entities for both internal and external constituencies; thinks appropriately into the future
• Service Orientation: Focuses and aligns actions and decisions on ways to enhance service
• Decisiveness: Makes timely and effective decisions
• Communication: Sends the right messages and information to appropriate audiences verbally and in writing; keeps people informed; adapts communication style to the needs of the audience
• Collaboration/Influence: Actively gathers appropriate level of participation and input to decision-making, and fosters same within team. Persuades others to see/recognize new perspectives to reach best outcomes by utilizing buy-in, persuasion and relationship building.

Come join our team. You’re going to like it here!  

Compensation Range: $160,000.00 - $210,000.00