Director – Merch Ops

Director – Merch Ops, Merch Capabilities

About us:

Target is an iconic brand, a Fortune 50 company and one of America’s leading retailers.

Building world-class Category Management capabilities (Space, Financial Planning, Assortment Planning, Presentation and Insights) is a key strategic priority for Target as our teams currently go through cumbersome tools, have inconsistent processes for similar activities, often with different roles performing the tasks. As a leader of this cutting-edge, data-driven team, you will help pioneer and lead efforts to advance our Category Management capabilities for Merchandising. This team works cross functionally across the organization, partners with various product teams, strategic partners, and Merchandising teams, driving innovation and efficiency in how our teams run their business. The team is well known for its signature ability to drive critical capabilities and build the very best teams, and we infuse our work with Target’s distinctive retail brand by continuously experimenting, evolving and innovating. Our dynamic, passionate and solution-oriented team comprises of specialized professionals that can bridge solutions across business teams, technology, and product teams to drive long-term value and business efficiencies.

Working within Merch Ops, your mission will be to pioneer and drive successful product operations, engagement plans, and support strategies to advance the overall Category Management capabilities. This effort requires a candidate that can partner across assigned businesses to properly understand critical business needs, define solutions, prioritize product efforts, and to bridge with our overall capabilities roadmap to drive continuous innovation and elevation of key business functions.

As a Director – Merch Ops, you’ll create and execute product & process strategies that advance our product operations structure, priorities, and overall Insights, Financial Planning, and Assortment Planning capabilities across Merchandising. In partnership with our Pyramid Leads, you will drive the necessary interaction model and process solutions across our capability efforts. This involves working with both internal and external partner teams to drive new, data-driven behaviors that help unlock a more strategic, guest-centric approach that will innovate Target’s Merchandising strategies and processes. By leveraging the product model approach, you’ll build empathy, understanding, and robust relationships with Merchandising leaders and teams to define and create tailored Insights, Financial Planning, and Assortment Planning capabilities. You will leverage your strong analytical thinking and team leadership capabilities to motivate and shepherd key priorities with product and support teams while defining product fit, go-to-market planning, and the overall process flow of business engagement.

The Principal duties of this role are as follows:

• Drives capability enablement Steering Committee, cross Operations and Product, and End User Advocacy routines.
• Leads capability work under the Category Management program and critical work streams that support the product interaction model across discretionary and frequency categories.
• Understands business challenges, thinks strategically to solve business challenges and makes data driven decisions to inform what work to prioritize across the team.
• Responsible for driving improvements in KPI’s while driving operational rigor across assortment planning and insights activities.
• Communicates metric updates to key leadership group on an ongoing basis
• Collaborates extensively with internal teams, providing thought leadership and ensuring appropriate team members are aligned around similar goals and objectives
• Inspires others to achieve challenging goals and high standards of performance while committing to the organization’s direction
• Fosters a sense of urgency to achieve goals and leverages resources to overcome unexpected obstacles
• Defines the necessary product support model, documentation, and overall engagement model across Product and Operations.
• Role is self-directed and requires strategy development, problem solving, independent judgement and decision making around Product Operations and designing our key processes.

We’ll support you along the way with strong onboarding, as well as personal and career development, to help you grow as a strong Director. The exciting part of retail? It’s always changing! Core responsibilities of this job are described within this job description. Job duties may change at any time due to business needs.

About you:

• Four-year degree or equivalent experience, Master’s Degree Preferred
• 12+ years of work experience in Merchandising, Category Management, and/or Product Management
• Experience leading technology/product adoption at a large scale.
• Proven ability to lead cross-functional partners to align on resource needs and prioritization to accomplish business objectives
• Extensive experience working with Lean Practices (6Sigma, Kanban, Agile Development, etc…) at an Enterprise Scale
• Expert analytical, decision-making, project management, and communication skills
• Ability to assimilate information quickly and accurately.
• Track record of success in dealing effectively with complex projects entailing frequent interaction with senior executives.
• Experience working in a support/ticket management function.
• Experience working in a CI/CD environment.
• Previous experience leading a team is preferred

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

Target will provide reasonable accommodations (such as a qualified sign language interpreter or other personal assistance) with the application process upon your request as required to comply with applicable laws. If you have a disability and require assistance in this application process, please visit your nearest Target store or Distribution Center or reach out to Guest Services at 1-800-440-0680 for additional information.

Qualifications: