Director, POS Programs & Operations

As part of our continued growth and expansion in the marketplace, we strive to build and maintain a high-performing store technology infrastructure in support of over 230 stores across 27 states. Our POS technology ecosystem plays a major role for the success of our business and in support of the best customer experience.

With an aggressive market expansion strategy across the country at a rate of 15-20 stores per year, our priority is to deliver and maintain a solid, scalable, and modern POS infrastructure to ensure smooth and efficient store operations.

To support the business growth and ongoing technology innovation in this critical area, we are looking for a ‘Director, POS Programs & Operations’.

The ‘Director of POS Programs & Operations’ will oversee all major functions, systems/services, and resources in support of the POS applications and services. The scope includes oversight for all systems integrated or connected with the POS environment, such as Payment Systems and Gateways, Tax Solutions, Fraud Prevention Systems, POS Sales Audit, In-Store Mobile POS and support for omni-channel experiences.

Responsibilities include program/project management to execute new initiatives and solutions, and Operations (L2/L3 Production Support). The Director will drive the vision and execution of the future POS roadmap and ongoing technology updates in support of systems’ lifecycle/growth.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Build a vision for the future POS ecosystem (e.g. cloud/thin POS), and realistic multi-year implementation plans to accomplish such vision.
• In collaboration with business partners (e.g. StoreOps and Infrastructure), drive the definition and implementation of a multi-year POS technology roadmap to improve efficiencies of stores and store associates, enhance customer’s and associate’s in-store experience, and save costs. Work across multiple domains, ensuring critical dependencies are identified and the best solutions are delivered on time. Scope of responsibilities will include POS systems, Fraud Prevention systems, Cross-channel Payment systems, Omni-channel tax and sales audit solutions, and other critical systems and services in support of in-store operations.
• Drive strategic planning sessions & facilitate the prioritization of the initiatives based on data, business values and ROI, in tight collaboration with other IT Teams, Store Ops and other business stakeholders.
• Build partnerships with relevant business units and serve as the business partner’s advocate. Use relationships to drive identified business change required to deliver project benefits. Ensure project ROI hurdles are met.
• Work closely with the Marketing Systems team in support of initiatives and operations involving Marketing solutions (e.g. Loyalty, Promotions, Personalization) in the POS customer experience.
• Understand the rapidly evolving retail technology landscape and build a strong point of view around innovation and how the technologies can add value to the stores and customers. Collaborate closely with the Architecture/Engineering and Network/Security teams on technology selection, planning and implementation of secure and high-performing solutions.
• Collaborate with EDAP team to analyze and mine valuable data insights, with special focus POS’s performance, efficiency and productivity, and possible improvements through technology. Use data to prioritize future enhancements and solutions.
• Develop and implement program management practices including planning, budgeting, business cases development, vendor management and report on discrepancies on owned store technology initiatives.
• Build & run a highly performing Operations/Production Support Team for Level2/3 support, through own POS resources, and in tight collaboration with other TWM teams (e.g. Service Desk/BEST team) and through external partnerships (Oracle, Logic etc). Provide management escalation support for production issues during business and non-business hours.
• Drive prioritization of functional enhancements and issues resolution, based on business impact assessment, resources’ availability, and mitigation strategies. Oversee configuration changes, patches, and releases.
• Drive innovation, process improvements, and automation working with the team and vendors. Ensure availability of dashboards and monitoring tools to monitor, report, and alert on health and performance of POS systems
• Communicate application issues and status to necessary stakeholders
• Provide agreed upon service level of production system support
• Oversees QA process, plans and resources for POS
• Oversee a team of 7 people including operations, architects, QA, PMs.
• Responsible for team members’ performance management, talent selection and retention, day-to-day workload management, resources allocations and individual development.
• Vendors’ and contracts’ management
• Responsible for the development and management of the annual POS budget (Projects & Services)
• Be both a thought leader and cheerleader among company executives, peers and own teams to realize the vision
• Customer first focus
• Deliver results

JOB REQUIREMENTS:

Minimum Experience, Skills and Education:

• Graduate degree in business, engineering, computer science or related field.
• At least seven years of Retail experience, across multiple domains (POS/Stores, Merchandising/Supply Chain, e-Commerce/Digital, Mobile technologies and others).
• Strong knowledge and understanding of the Store Operations problematics and challenges.
• A minimum 10 years of technical and project leadership in increasing levels of responsibility.
• Experience with architecting/implementing POS solutions, including integration of POS systems with on-premises and SaaS 3rd party systems.
• Solid Technical Project/Program Management skills, budgeting, planning, risk management
• POS Subject Matter Expertise
• Service/Operations Management, SLAs
• Must have a strong business acumen and the ability to balance a strategic focus with getting into the details.

• Track record of building and maintaining excellent working relationships with peers across organizations

• Must have strong collaboration skills with the ability to influence without authority and interact within a matrix based organizational structure and external stakeholders.
• Data-driven. Analytical thinking. Ability to simplify complex problems, processes or projects into component parts explore and evaluate them systematically

• Excellent verbal and written communication skills and the ability to work with and through others to resolve issues
• Experience working with 3rd party integrated software solutions & tools – specifically Jira, Microsoft Teams, Splunk

• Effective people management skills. Ability to lead under pressure.
• Proven experience in working with a geographically distributed team.
• Strong delegation and people empowerment skills.