The Role
The Director of Enterprise Applications provides strategic leadership, governance, and operational oversight for the organization’s core software ecosystem and business platform integrations. This executive role is responsible for establishing the enterprise applications roadmap, managing software portfolios, and ensuring that critical business applications deliver consistent value to
corporate, retail, and supply chain divisions.

Unlike infrastructure or security-focused directors, this position centers on optimizing the software landscape, managing enterprise software vendors, driving digital transformation through application development, and ensuring seamless data flows across unified systems.

Primary Responsibilities
Platform Administration & Support
● Strategic Oversight: Direct the availability, lifecycle, and modernization of all global enterprise applications, including ERP, CRM, and core business software platforms.
● Governance & Standards: Establish comprehensive application lifecycle frameworks, continuous deployment strategies, and system integration plans to minimize operational risk.
● Incident Escalation: Act as the ultimate authority for major business application outages, directing software debugging, patch deployments, and post-mortem reviews.
● Capacity Planning: Forecast enterprise software consumption, user licensing
requirements, and platform scalability to stay ahead of corporate growth.

Vendor & Service Delivery Management
● Contract Negotiation: Manage enterprise agreements and high-value partnerships with major software providers, SaaS vendors, and application integration partners.
● Strategic Auditing: Review top-tier managed service providers and software vendor deliverables against global Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Leadership & Stakeholder Engagement
● Executive Advisory: Partner directly with the C-suite and business operations leaders to align application investments with organizational KPIs and growth.

● Talent Cultivation: Lead, mentor, and build accountability within internal application development, business analysis, and software support teams.

Stakeholder Communication & Leadership
● Vision Alignment: Translate highly complex application roadmaps and software integration updates into clear, value-driven business strategies for non-technical leaders.
● Steering Committees: Chair regular cross-functional leadership meetings to coordinate enterprise software upgrades, patch schedules, and application rollouts.

Collaboration & Communication
● Enterprise Unity: Collaborate closely with Infrastructure, IT Operations, and Cybersecurity divisions to champion a unified, secure-by-design application footprint.

Qualifications
● 8+ years of progressive IT leadership experience overseeing enterprise applications, software portfolios, technical delivery teams, and strategic technology initiatives.
● Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field (or equivalent experience); advanced degrees preferred.
● Strong expertise in enterprise applications, ERP platforms, system integrations, APIs, SDLC, Agile methodologies, and modern software development practices.
● Proven success managing application budgets, vendor relationships, software portfolios, and large-scale technology implementations.
● Experience leading critical application support, system migrations, outage resolution, and executive-level escalation management.
● Strong understanding of data governance, software compliance, privacy regulations, and application security best practices.
● Exceptional communication, leadership, and stakeholder management skills with the ability to influence technical teams, business leaders, and executive leadership.
● Collaborative leader with the ability to align technology solutions with business objectives and drive cross-functional partnerships across the organization.
● Experience with SAP and other ERP platforms is strongly preferred, particularly within retail environments supporting merchandising, inventory, and related business functions.
● Ability to evaluate solution designs, validate technical implementations, gather business requirements, and translate organizational needs into scalable technology solutions.