Summary/Objective

The role drives the strategy and design of the cloud / on premise infrastructure enabling digital, brick and mortar, wholesale and international growth. Deep knowledge with e-commerce engineering, performance as well as retail stores is required.

This role operates with as an innovative retail and wholesale professional with expertise in Enterprise IT operations. It is the driver of the Strategy and Innovation within Information Technology with the balance to execute with excellence. Success comes with embracing the principles of the organization: Be Proactive, Be Curious, Make a Difference; Execute with Excellence with an eye for detail, Create an engaging customer experience; communicate with no surprises and expect the utmost integrity.

This role balances exceptional results, exceptional relationships and an insatiable curiosity through leveraging project methodologies (waterfall or agile) to deliver projects.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities
• Operate with and propagate a mindset of exceptional customer satisfaction.
• Serve as a thought leader and trusted business partner
• Drives innovation and new technologies
• Network; Demonstrated experience redesigning and optimizing a WAN for 300 stores and locations.
• Voice; Implement a hi-availability VoIP solution for 300 offices/stores and call center with an expectation of zero downtime and a high quality of service. Experience with internal Avaya VOIP & call center technology and 3rd party support services.
• Develop close working relationships with key partners through written, verbal and face to face meetings. Key relationships include; PMO leadership, Digital leadership, Security leadership and vendor community.
• Develop working relationships with vendors during the software selection, procurement and implementation phases of projects.
• Hosting and vendor contract expertise; Reduce cost and improve performance and availability with an optimized hosting infrastructure producing quantifiable reductions in underutilization, yet offering flexibility and elasticity for rapid organic growth and seasonal trends
• Partners closely with the Help desk and application teams
• Drive innovation Leverages the technology innovation center to test and teach new products
• Propagate better understanding of IT capabilities, goals and objectives to the business community
• Actively influence business strategies
• Champion and drive the IT innovation lab
• Pro-actively identify opportunities to exploit IT systems to better meet business needs
• Defines the strategic functional / technical roadmap
• Define and improve the functional processes that support the organizational functions through projects and enhancements to tools
• Research technology / retail knowledge
• Ensure operational excellence and build organizational

o Take accountability for project lifecycle: project management, infrastructure delivery and change enablement thus ensuring PMO Operational Excellence. Leverage current project and development tools sets.
• Leverage strategic partners and internal functional resources
• Take accountability for on-going support: ensure an COBIT / ITIL / ITSM approach to incident management and enhancement management providing responsive support to all business functions for store operations and CRM related customer engagement
• Act as the steward to the Technology organization
• Contribute to the development of IT strategy
• Execute in accordance to company procurement, budget and forecasting policies and procedures
• Develop subordinates and peers internal / external

o Actively develop career path and succession planning within function and contribute to total technology function
• Execute and deliver in accordance to audit, risk and governance guidelines.
• Ensures quality, redundancy and BCP

o Vastly improve support services maturity levels with proactive monitoring and response, SLAs, problem avoidance, root-cause resolution, and other methods

Travel
• This position requires limited travel; 0-25%

Qualifications and Requirements
• Degree in business / technical area; advanced degree preferred
• Minimum 15 years of relevant experience
• Cloud IaaS and AWS experience
• Network design
• Telecommunication contracting
• Voice design and management
• VM ware
• Microsoft contracting and management
• Six Sigma or other process improvement expertise
• Knowledge of trends in retail and functional related technology
• Knowledge of trends in consumer and enterprise technology
• Strong background in managing, implementing and deploying technology solutions
• Proven track record in managing, implementing and deploying technology solutions
• Track record in negotiating with and managing vendor relationships
• Management of IT consulting initiatives
• Effective cost management and control
• Experience implementing change control and security
• 8 years senior management experience
• International experience in Canada, UK, Europe and Asia a strong plus
• Strong interpersonal skills
• Effective communication
• Knowledge of current IT industry trends
• Strong marketing and presentation skills
• Strong skills in deal making and negotiations
• Proved team and staff development
• Business Knowledge and Organizational Agility
• Managing Vision and Purpose
• Critical Decision Making
• Understand and Operation with Political Savvy
• Directing others
• Cross-cultural agility
• Lead the IT budget and process
• Drive for results
• Manage through systems (TQM/ISO/SixSigma/ITIL/COBIT/Re-engineering)