Sr. Manager, DistributionWhat will you do?The Sr. Manager of Distribution is responsible for leading a large, complex omnichannel distribution center supporting retail, wholesale, marketplace, and ecommerce fulfillment operations. This position provides strategic and hands-on leadership for daily operations, people development, safety, service, inventory accuracy, cost management, and continuous improvement. The role is accountable for building scalable processes, developing high-performing teams, and ensuring the distribution center is prepared to support significant ecommerce growth while maintaining strong service levels across all channels.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities- Lead and direct daily distribution center operations, including receiving, put-away, replenishment, picking, packing, sortation, staging, shipping, returns, inventory control, and value-added services.
- Provide leadership to managers, supervisors, leads, and hourly associates across multiple departments, shifts, or operating windows.
- Ensure operational execution supports omnichannel fulfillment requirements, including ecommerce direct-to-consumer orders, retail replenishment, wholesale distribution, marketplace activity, parcel shipping, LTL/FTL shipments, and customer-specific requirements.
- Develop labor plans, staffing models, operating schedules, and workflow priorities aligned to volume forecasts, promotional activity, seasonality, peak periods, ecommerce growth, and service-level commitments.
- Monitor and improve facility performance against key operating metrics, including safety, quality, inventory accuracy, productivity, cost per unit, order cycle time, on-time shipping, dock-to-stock time, throughput, and customer service.
- Partner cross-functionally with transportation, planning, customer service, merchandising, technology, finance, human resources, safety, maintenance, and senior leadership to align distribution center execution with business priorities.
- Maintain a visible leadership presence on the floor to remove barriers, coach leaders, reinforce standards, validate process compliance, and drive accountability.
- Ensure compliance with company policies, workplace safety standards, OSHA requirements, equipment safety practices, and applicable regulatory requirements.
- Manage operating budgets, labor expense, overtime, supplies, equipment utilization, vendor support, and cost-control initiatives.
- Support and optimize warehouse technology and operational systems, including WMS, LMS, OMS, TMS, RF equipment, material handling systems, automation, and business intelligence tools.
Omnichannel and Ecommerce Growth- Design and scale fulfillment processes that support rapid ecommerce growth while maintaining service levels for existing distribution channels.
- Balance competing channel priorities, including parcel fulfillment, LTL/FTL shipping, retail replenishment, customer-specific routing guides, marketplace requirements, and expedited orders.
- Lead capacity planning for labor, space, slotting, equipment, automation, and carrier throughput to support future order growth.
- Partner with technology and operations teams to optimize WMS/OMS logic, wave planning, batch picking, cartonization, inventory allocation, routing, and exception management.
- Prepare the operation for peak periods, promotional surges, holiday demand, product launches, and new customer/channel onboarding.
Continuous Improvement and Operational ExcellenceThis position serves as a visible champion of continuous improvement and operational excellence. The Sr. Manager, Distribution is responsible for building a culture where problems are identified early, root causes are understood, associates are engaged in solutions, and measurable improvements are sustained over time.
- Develop and lead a continuous improvement roadmap focused on safety, quality, cost, service, productivity, space utilization, labor efficiency, inventory accuracy, and ecommerce scalability.
- Apply Lean, Six Sigma, Kaizen, 5S, standard work, visual management, root cause analysis, value stream mapping, and DMAIC methods to eliminate waste and improve process flow.
- Establish baseline performance, define target conditions, prioritize opportunities, and track financial and operational benefits from improvement initiatives.
- Lead cross-functional improvement events involving operations, engineering, maintenance, technology, inventory control, transportation, HR, and frontline associates.
- Create and maintain standard operating procedures, job instructions, process controls, daily management routines, and audit mechanisms to sustain improvements.
- Use operational data, WMS reporting, labor management insights, dashboards, time studies, and floor observations to identify bottlenecks, defects, rework, excess travel, poor slotting, congestion, and capacity constraints.
- Drive improvements in picking paths, slotting strategy, replenishment logic, pack station design, dock flow, wave planning, returns processing, inventory control, and carrier handoff.
- Build associate engagement by creating feedback loops, recognition programs, problem-solving boards, and structured methods for frontline employees to submit and test improvement ideas.
- Partner with finance to validate savings, productivity gains, cost avoidance, and return on investment for labor, equipment, automation, and process changes.
- Ensure change management is embedded into every improvement project through communication plans, training, leader standard work, readiness reviews, and post-implementation audits.
- Develop supervisors and managers in continuous improvement thinking so the site can sustain a daily improvement culture rather than relying only on project-based events.
- Report progress to senior leadership with clear metrics, project status, risk mitigation plans, and recommendations for additional investment or support.
Leadership and Team Development- Build a high-performance leadership team through coaching, accountability, succession planning, and development of managers, supervisors, leads, and associates.
- Create a culture of safety, ownership, urgency, collaboration, inclusion, and continuous improvement.
- Set clear expectations, inspect performance, provide timely feedback, and hold leaders accountable for results and behaviors.
- Partner with HR on staffing strategy, recruiting, onboarding, retention, performance management, engagement, and workforce planning.
- Lead communication routines such as shift start-up meetings, tier meetings, KPI reviews, action planning sessions, and business reviews.
- Promote cross-training and flexible staffing models to support changing volume, channel mix, and ecommerce demand variability.
What makes you a great catch?- Bachelor's degree in supply chain, logistics, operations management, business, industrial engineering, or related field preferred; equivalent experience may be considered.
- Minimum 10 - 15 years of progressive leadership within warehouse, fulfillment, distribution, logistics, or supply chain operations experience.
- 5 - 7+ years of leadership experience managing supervisors, managers, and large hourly teams in a high-volume distribution or fulfillment environment.
- Experience operating in an omnichannel environment with ecommerce, retail replenishment, wholesale, parcel, LTL/FTL, or customer-specific fulfillment requirements.
- Strong knowledge of WMS, labor planning, inventory control, receiving, picking, packing, shipping, replenishment, returns, and performance management.
- Demonstrated success leading continuous improvement initiatives with measurable results in productivity, cost, safety, quality, or service.
- Experience managing budgets, labor cost, overtime, capacity constraints, service levels, and operational KPIs.
- Ability to work flexible hours as needed to support multi-shift operations, peak periods, and business-critical events.
- Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Black Belt, APICS, CSCP, CPIM, OSHA, or similar certification.
- Experience with automation, conveyors, sortation, pick-to-light, goods-to-person, robotics, cartonization, slotting optimization, or labor management systems.
- Experience scaling ecommerce fulfillment operations through rapid growth, new channel launches, network changes, or facility expansion.
- Strong financial acumen with experience building business cases, tracking savings, and managing return on investment for operational improvements.
- Experience working in a metrics-driven culture using dashboards, BI tools, daily management systems, and structured operating rhythms.
Your work environment- Ability to work in a distribution center environment with exposure to warehouse equipment, varying temperatures, noise, and active material handling areas.
- Ability to stand, walk, and move throughout the facility for extended periods as needed.
- Ability to work flexible schedules, including evenings, weekends, holidays, and extended hours during peak business periods.
- Must be able to comply with all safety requirements, personal protective equipment standards, and site operating procedures.
Core Competencies- Operational leadership in complex, high-volume distribution environments.
- Data-driven decision-making and KPI management.
- Continuous improvement mindset and structured problem solving.
- Strong communication with frontline teams, peers, and senior leaders.
- Ability to lead through change, ambiguity, growth, and competing priorities.
- Customer-focused thinking with a strong understanding of ecommerce service expectations.
- Talent development, coaching, accountability, and succession planning.
- Financial discipline, labor management, and cost-control execution.
Key Performance Indicators- Recordable safety incident rate and near-miss closure rate.
- Order accuracy, inventory accuracy, and defect reduction.
- On-time shipping, dock-to-stock cycle time, and order cycle time.
- Units per labor hour, cost per unit, and overtime percentage.
- Ecommerce order throughput, parcel cut-off performance, and peak readiness.
- Space utilization, slotting effectiveness, replenishment performance, and congestion reduction.
- Continuous improvement savings, project completion rate, and sustained benefit realization.
- Employee engagement, retention, training completion, and leadership bench strength.
