Job Description

The IT Solution Owner is accountable for the end-to-end definition, coordination, delivery, and lifecycle stewardship of assigned technology solutions and initiatives. The role connects business objectives, product priorities, technical execution, governance, quality, readiness, and measurable outcomes. Working through influence rather than direct authority, the Solution Owner leads cross-functional teams and serves as the day-to-day point of accountability from intake and discovery through implementation, adoption, operational transition, and continuous improvement. The role flexes across Waterfall, Agile, hybrid, pod-based, and product-team delivery models while maintaining National Vision SDLC, risk, security, compliance, financial, and documentation expectations. Within Data & Analytics, the role owns delivery coordination and lifecycle stewardship for data products and initiatives such as dashboards, semantic models, data pipelines, APIs, governed datasets, analytics capabilities, and AI/ML-enabled solutions.

Essential Functions
• Owns delivery from intake through value realization by clarifying the business objective, expected outcome, scope, success measures, delivery approach, and accountable stakeholders; maintains continuity through launch, transition, and post-implementation learning. Some of the early stages of intake will be completed in partnership with the Strategic Transformation Office where applicable.
• Serves as the primary day-to-day liaison across business, product, engineering, architecture, security, quality assurance, operations, finance, governance, and vendor teams; translates between business priorities and technical delivery realities.
• Tailors and leads the delivery model. Builds and maintains the appropriate roadmap, release plan, integrated schedule, backlog, milestones, ceremonies, tollgates, decision cadence, and governance for Waterfall, Agile, hybrid, pod-based, or product-team work.
• Defines and maintains delivery clarity by coordinating requirements, user stories, process flows, acceptance criteria, architecture and design artifacts, dependency plans, test evidence, training, deployment, operational readiness, and approvals.
• Partners with Product Owners and business leaders to shape priorities and value; partners with Solution Architects and engineering leaders to validate technical approach, feasibility, sequencing, and alignment with enterprise standards.
• Leads team execution by facilitating planning, refinement, estimation, reviews, retrospectives, working sessions, status reviews, and decision forums; removes impediments and protects focus while encouraging shared accountability.
• Manages scope, schedule, resources, budget awareness, vendors, risks, issues, assumptions, decisions, changes, and cross-team dependencies. Escalates early with clear options, impacts, recommendations, and decision needs.
• Drives quality and release confidence with QA, engineering, security, operations, and business stakeholders through test strategy, traceability, defect management, user acceptance, release readiness, go/no-go decisions, hypercare, and support transition.
• Provides concise, transparent, audience-appropriate reporting using milestones, delivery forecasts, financial information, RIDAC/RAID and decision logs, quality indicators, and outcome measures. Uses team metrics to improve flow and predictability, not to evaluate individuals.
• Champions sustainable ways of working, reusable delivery practices, documentation quality, knowledge transfer, lessons learned, and continuous improvement.
• Identifies appropriate opportunities to use AI-enabled tools for analysis, documentation, backlog refinement, prototyping, delivery workflows, and team productivity while following company security, privacy, and responsible-use requirements.

Additional Functions/Responsibilities
• Partners with business data owners, reporting owners, data engineering, data architecture, analytics, governance, security, and platform teams to define the data product, intended decisions, measures, sources, quality expectations, and adoption plan.
• Owns and maintains data-product roadmaps, prioritized backlogs, dependencies, release plans, acceptance criteria, data validation, lineage and documentation needs, and measurable value outcomes.
• Coordinates source-to-consumption delivery across ingestion, transformation, modeling, semantic definitions, reporting, analytics, access, and operational support; surfaces trade-offs involving quality, timeliness, cost, scalability, and reuse.
• Reinforces data governance by ensuring ownership, definitions, controls, access, privacy, quality rules, certification, and change impacts are addressed before release.
• Supports vendor and partner delivery while keeping business knowledge, product ownership, technical direction, governance, and roadmap accountability inside National Vision.

Qualifications

Education

• Four year college degree or equivalent experience.
• Bachelor's degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, Data/Analytics, Engineering, Business, or related field; or equivalent practical experience. (Required)

Work Experience

• 4-6 years Technology or data solution delivery, including product/project/program management, business analysis, analytics delivery, or data platform work. (Required)
• Delivery of analytics, reporting, data integration, data platform, governance, or data product initiatives across a full lifecycle. (Required)
• Application of Agile and hybrid practices to data work, including iterative discovery, data validation, testing, and release planning. (Required)
• Translation of business questions, measures, and decisions into data requirements and prioritized delivery plans. (Required)

Additional Skills - Includes Computer/Software Skills

• End-to-end technology delivery leadership across the software, platform, package implementation, integration, data, or testing lifecycle. (Required)
• Business and functional analysis, including requirements elicitation, process decomposition, user stories, acceptance criteria, and decision facilitation. (Required)
• Working knowledge of Waterfall, Scrum, Kanban, scaled Agile, hybrid delivery, pod structures, and persistent product teams. (Required)
• Project and program fundamentals including scope, schedules, budgets, forecasts, RIDAC/RAID, change control, dependencies, vendor coordination, and executive reporting. (Required)
• Understanding of SDLC controls, architecture collaboration, security and compliance checkpoints, testing, release management, operational readiness, and value realization. (Required)
• Executive presence, facilitation, negotiation, conflict resolution, written communication, and the ability to synthesize complex information into decisions. (Required)
• Proficiency with work-management tools such as ServiceNow, Azure DevOps, Jira, Confluence, Microsoft 365, or comparable platforms. (Required)
• Ability to lead through influence, create clarity in ambiguity, balance near-term commitments with long-term direction, and foster an accountable, inclusive team environment. (Required)
• Working knowledge of data pipelines, models, semantic layers, dashboards, APIs, data quality, metadata, security, and cloud data concepts. (Required)
• Data-product thinking including vision, roadmap, use cases, KPIs, adoption, value realization, lifecycle decisions, and enhancement prioritization. (Required)
• Ability to facilitate metric and definition alignment across sources, business interpretations, and downstream uses. (Required)
• Experience with Microsoft Azure data services, Fabric, Power BI, Databricks, Synapse, or comparable modern data platforms. (Required)
• Basic SQL literacy or equivalent ability to interrogate data and collaborate with data engineers and analysts. (Required)

Licenses, Certifications, Professional Affiliations

• Agile or product ownership certifications such as CSM, PSM, SAFe, CSPO, PSPO, or PMI-ACP.(Preferred)
• PMP or comparable delivery management certification or training. (Preferred)
• Data governance, cloud data platform, business intelligence, analytics product management, or responsible AI training. (Preferred)

Additional Information

Taking Care of our People!

We understand the importance of financial health and security, and because of that, we provide competitive compensation to all associates. We also offer a comprehensive benefits package including health and dental insurance, 401k retirement savings with company match, flex spending account, paid personal time off, paid company holidays, parental leave, employee eyewear discount, and much, much more. At National Vision, we strive to deliver opportunities for professional growth and long-term career fulfillment. We provide training programs and access to educational courses and pride ourselves on the ever-increasing amount of promotions from within.#LI-SH1