Senior Director, Solution Architecture at Macys in New York, NY

About:

Macy’s is proudly America’s Department Store. For more than 160 years, Macy’s has served generations at every stage of their lives. Customers come to us for fashion, value and celebration. Now is an exciting time to join Macy’s, Inc. The face of retail is changing, and change requires innovation.

Macy’s Digital business is in the top 10 largest in the U.S. (#1 largest in NYC) and has driven 10 consecutive years of double-digit growth. We’re building a new type of customer-centric shopping experience - at the intersection of content, commerce, and technology - to help customers find and buy products they love.

Do you want to collaborate with a smart and talented team in a fun work environment? This is a unique opportunity to join an established company that is investing in development and growing digital business at scale. Gain first-hand experience defining the future of online and physical commerce. With a constant influx of exciting and challenging problems to solve - you'll never have a boring day at the office. We also offer many roles with the freedom to build and lead a team. Join Macy’s Digital to grow your career and help shape the future of an iconic brand.

Job Overview:

The Senior Director, Solution Architecture is responsible for defining solution architecture principles and the architectural design for analytical solution development including design of data processing and management platform and AI/ML tools required to achieve the use cases. They will also drive the overall platform strategy to ensure it is scalable and resilient taking into account cross-domain inputs, in coordination with Tech. The Senior Director will design and develop data & analytics tools and solution principles to simplify overall capability offerings and ensure seamless integration for Macy’s Inc. The Senior Director will lead and build a focused team of solution architects who will establish and drive standards for data models/architecture, data access and controls, analytical solution development process, and toolkit that will help accelerate the analytical solution delivery in a consistent way across the enterprise and partner closely with Business Units to support analytics execution. The Senior Director will report to the SVP of Enterprise Data & Analytics, who leads this newly formed unit to accelerate deployment and value delivery from data and analytics, and coordinate efforts across the enterprise. Perform other duties as assigned.

Essential Functions:

• Establish tool and solutions standards across core platforms for priority analytics use cases.
• Serve as liaison between Tech and Business Units to ensure tool, solution strategy, and selection is in-line with business needs.
• Define solution principles to ensure seamless integration within Enterprise Data Analytics teams and Business Units.
• Closely coordinate with Tech to ensure solutions and tools for priority use cases align to and are incorporated into enterprise tech stack and roadmap.
• Continuously reduce complexity of capability offerings.
• Collaborate with Tech to future-proof and consolidate Data & Analytics software, solutions, and tools.
• Partner with Tech to evolve Data & Analytics Platform strategy in line with business priorities.
• Work with Legal and Privacy teams to adhere to data privacy and security standards.
• Work closely with Tech, Business Units, and other Enterprise Data & Analytics teams to scale use cases from proof-of-concept to pilot to industrialization.

Data:

• Set standards for data model and target architecture across data platform layers and assets.
• Identify, evaluate, and recommend the right set of processes and tools for data pipelines, data management, data processing and storage.
• Work with data security team, establish appropriate data access control mechanisms, and ensure that the enterprise authentications are synchronized with the analytical platform access controls.
• Define and ensure implementation for data encryption at rest and in-transit data and put similar controls on the archival and retention of data.

Culture:

• Create and foster community of practice for data and analytics.
• Embed culture of solution simplicity and consistency.
• Drive change management to create user adoption of analytical tools and methods and embrace data in strategic business decisions.
• Improve accessibility and consistency of solutions through a simplified offering, coordinated and connected across business units.
• Increase agility in identifying data issues and taking action to remediate.
• Encourage user adoption of analytical tools and methods, and embrace data in strategic business decisions.
• Create awareness, knowledge and conviction around data-driven practices and behaviors, increasing digital IQ of organization.

Leadership:

• Leader with a passion for data and analytics who can build credibility for the Enterprise Data & Analytics team within the organization.
• Lead the alignment of best in class analytics for the total enterprise including coordination with senior leadership.
• Partner closely with Technology and Business Units to drive adoption, as well as provide direct analytical support where needed.
• Balance both leading a team and engage directly with the work needed to accomplish the priority use cases.
• Coach direct reports as they build strategies and roadmaps.
• Create and foster career development and growth paths for team members in alignment with company and personal objectives.
• Assist direct reports with ongoing prioritization and resource allocation to ensure that the crucial business initiatives are delivered.
• Provide guidance on recruitment and career pathing for analytics resources.
• Balance team resourcing and talent management.
• Demonstrate Macy’s leadership commitments of promoting diversity and inclusion, encouraging growth, creating connection and driving performance.

Key Performance Indicators:

• Cost of external/third party resources and tools.
• Compliance with relevant laws and regulations.
• Industry benchmarks (e.g., cost of analytics resources/tools vs. revenue).
• Annualized value to business vs. expense (upfront investment and run rate).

Qualifications and Competencies:

• Bachelor's Degree from a 4-year college or university
• 7-10 years direct experience
• Data & Analytics leader with 7-10 years of experience in the field.
• 5+ years of leading & managing a team of solution architects.
• Technologist fluent in data technologies, solutions, and tools, e.g.:
• Certified Technical architect – e.g., TOGAF or similar, with a proven track record of designing and delivering AI/ML solutions.
• Certified or deep experiences in one or more public cloud offerings – with a track record of delivering cloud-native, open-source based solutions (e.g. GCP, Azure, AWS etc).
• Experience in defining/implementing data models for various data domains with standard data architecture principles.
• Experience in evaluating and implementing data management and analytical solution development tools.
• Experiences in defining standard set of delivery processes for data management and analytical solution development.
• Solutions expert with experience defining tooling roadmaps and mapping interaction between cross-functional teams within an enterprise D&A platforms.
• Ability to effectively share technical information, communicate technical issues and solutions to all levels of business
• Able to juggle multiple projects - can identify primary and secondary objectives, prioritize time and communicate timeline to team members
• Ability and desire to take product/project ownership
• Ability to think creatively, strategically and technically
• Ability to work a flexible schedule based on department and Company needs.