Applications Development Director jobs in Santa Cruz, CA

Reporting to the VP of Business Operations, this position will drive the necessary alignment between technology teams, business processes, and a wide range of functional organizations.

Your focus will be on delivering critical digital transformation projects such as ERP enhancements and integrations, support for a complex eCommerce business and other critical business systems that support CRM, HRIS and Business planning processes.

You will be expected to be a hands-on subject matter expert capable of delivering the process and technology solutions required to solve complex business issues.

You will be responsible for building and managing a successful team of analysts and developing long-term strategies that assist our key businesses in continuing to achieve impressive revenue growth.

Team Leadership

• Lead a team of business applications product managers, business systems analysts and systems administrators
• Align your team with the strategic initiatives of the primary stakeholders 
• Partner with and/or manage outside resources to drive key project deliverables
• Partner with the Sr. Director of Data & Analytics and other development focused team leaders to enable key technical features that support business processes
• Foster a culture of trusted partnership, collaboration and continuous improvement 

Strategic Planning

• Work with the VP of Business operations to develop, shape, and maintain business applications strategy to achieve intelligent long-term exploitation of technology advances
• Establish and maintain the business process architecture that meets the strategic needs of the organization
• Create a robust Business Applications roadmap. Ensure this roadmap is well understood throughout the business functions and meets emerging requirements.
• Prepare and manage business applications expenditures to annual budget guidelines.

Project Management

• Execute the implementation of long and short-term strategic and operational IT projects that align with the organization's priorities and business needs.
• Drive key process and system projects that support major business transformation initiatives that will enable new business models, sales and product strategies
• Be a leader in the change management by encouraging adoption of new processes and technologies and promoting organizational change and scalable growth strategies

Partner with Key Business Functions

• Provide strategic process and technology leadership across the business, including but not limited to Marketing, Sales, Operations, Service, Finance, HR, and Product
• Drive alignment between IT and functional business leadership, manage strategic and tactical applications needs and requirements as defined by the business.
• Collaborate with and guide business leaders to continuously optimize business processes via strategic and sustainable automation within the business applications.
• Partner with functional business leadership to govern and maintain data integrity and quality across the platform domain.
• Partner with IT Engineering to drive successful implementations of capabilities.

Business Systems Management

• Establish and meet SLAs to support reliable and efficient daily operating capabilities.
• Balance and optimize all business application aspects including security, data integrity, productivity, integration, user training, and user adoption.
• Conduct empirical software selection to support optimal choices for the company.
• Collaborate with analysts, designers, and business process owners in the testing of new software programs and applications.
• Ensure services are delivered to security and compliance standards (SOX, PCI, GDPR).

Requirements/Skills

• Strong functional and tech knowledge in the Business Process and Architecture related to Marketing, Sales, Operations, Service, Finance, HR, and Product Management
• Experience supporting businesses that develop and distribute both hardware and software products or services.
• Significant experience in strategy, development, implementation, and use of IT systems.
• A successful track record in leading major ERP implementations and/or upgrades (Oracle NetSuite experience is a plus)
• Deep knowledge of industry-standard SAAS/IPAAS applications: PLM, ERP, HRIS, CRM etc.
• Strong understanding of SDLC and development processes, including Agile methodologies
• A proactive entrepreneurial attitude with strong emotional intelligence and demonstrated experience in high-growth, fast-paced organizations.