Job Overview:
The Director of IT Solutions Retail leads efforts in the long-term design, implementation, and operational support of IT Products and Services within the Retail business unit. This leadership position will lead the creation of the 1–3-year technology framework and provide technical leadership in support of UNFI’s initiatives in IT Solutions with the focus on the design of the systems and services that integrate into the business strategy.

Job Responsibilities:

IT Operations and Support

• Leads internal and vendor teams to support technology within our retail footprint

• Owns both service-level strategy and day-to-day execution, ensuring IT services are reliable, scalable, and aligned with established enterprise standards and business priorities.

• Leads operational teams and managed service partners, develops service roadmaps and improvement plans, and translates enterprise direction into effective operational outcomes.

• Supports UNFI-wide infrastructure and security initiatives

• Own service lifecycle planning, including onboarding, scaling, modernization, stabilization, and retirement of services.

• Identify operational risks, capacity constraints, and technical dependencies; develop mitigation and improvement plans.

• Provide operational input to investment planning, sequencing, and prioritization decisions.

• Own daily execution of retail IT services and ITSM processes.

• Lead response to major incidents, outages, and escalations; ensure timely resolution and effective communication.

• Manage service performance against SLAs, SLOs, and operational targets.

• Coordinate operational schedules, maintenance windows, and service changes.

• Serve as the primary operational escalation point for business stakeholders.

• Responsible for the organizational design of department which is aligned to organizational strategy, executing planned department goals, and the talent planning that supports strategy/goal execution

• Actively identifies and establishes metrics used to measure stability and supportability of technology within our retail stores

UNFI Business Partnership & Vendor Management

• Establishes and maintains strong working relations and partnerships with UNFI business teams, IT vendors and peers while addressing critical issues and opportunities to achieve organizational goals and objectives

• Actively engages in understanding business satisfaction levels to proactively solve chronic problems and assign team to resolve and respond to business requests and needs.

• Manages appropriate IT vendor relationship(s), understanding their products and services and aligning them with internal needs

• Effectively manages the utilization of external services (e.g., product or platform vendors, service providers, contractors, consultants, outsourced functions)

• Ensures appropriate IT vendor contracts are in place for corresponding products and services

• Creates RFIs, RFPs, SLAs, SOWs and processes invoices in alignment with our UNFI and IT best practices 

• Strong financial management skills, including budget ownership, forecasting, and cost management for operational services.

• Proven experience leading vendor and managed service relationships, including performance management, escalation, and continuous improvement

Additional Responsibilities

• Coach and mentor managers on their assigned efforts and team responsibilities.

• Ensures activities have proper coordination and collaboration when crossing multiple teams across IT, UNFI business areas or external IT vendors/partners

• Participate as a strategy partner in the IT strategic planning processes defines roadmaps for their corresponding IT products and services often providing a more senior perspective and sharing across other IT teams

• Provides leadership to IT teams through effective goal setting, performance management, recognition, associate engagement and ongoing team communication

• Creates and oversees departmental capital and expense budgets for projects, hardware, software, staffing (internal/external), etc. and ensures value has been added to the business through cost savings and ROI analyses

• Performs other duties as assigned.

Job Requirements:

Education/ Certifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in management information systems, computer science, or related discipline is required or combination of education and experience

Experience:

• 8-12 years of relevant IT and leadership experience

• 5+ years of relevant Information Technology modern integration and architecture experience is required

• 3-5+ years of experience working in a product team structure.

• 5+ years of experience in UX concepts

Knowledge/Skills/ Abilities

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, strong customer focus and demonstrated ability to work in geographically dispersed teams 

• Ability to manage concurrent efforts with competing priorities while ensuring timelines and budgets are met

• Ability to create process and process design where none or little exists

• Ability to create strategic landscape that delivers against IT goals, especially in a retail and supply chain setting

• Ability to build strong teams across dispersed work locations, including mentoring and providing developmental goals for internal employees and external IT partners

• Track record of being a change agent, one who can drive new and commercial thinking across the organization and the behaviors supporting such, while engaging in a collaborative, inclusive leadership style

• Good judgment is required for this position as there may be times when direct supervision may not be immediately available.

Work Environment:

Hybrid Role:

• This position follows a hybrid schedule working in office (2-3) days per week. The acceptable split between onsite and remote work is determined by the manager. Hybrid associates may choose to work from an office on a more frequent basis than required.

Travel (minor):

• This position may require the associate to travel to company offices, distribution centers, or other locations for specific meetings or other business reasons.

 
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