Director, Technical Program Management - Merch Data and Analytics Enablement

Position Summary...

This is a leader within Merch Data & Analytics Enablement (MDAE), responsible for building and scaling analytics capabilities, data products, and governance solutions across Demand, Assortment, Space, and Inventory.

This role sits at the intersection of merchandising strategy, data, analytics, and technology. You will lead a multidisciplinary team of product managers, data stewards, and analysts, while remaining deeply hands-on: shaping solutions, reviewing designs, and, building scrappy prototypes yourself when needed.

You will partner closely with Merchandising business teams, Product, Engineering, and Enterprise Data teams to translate complex merchandising problems into scalable, trusted, and automated data and analytics solutions that power decision-making, enable AI-driven workflows, and advance Merchandising Transformation.

What you'll do...

Lead strategy, execution, and delivery

• Own the product and program strategy for analytics capabilities, data products, and governance solutions across Demand, Assortment, Space, and Inventory.

• Translate merchandising priorities into a clear roadmap of data products, platforms, metrics, and inspection mechanisms that deliver measurable business impact.

• Drive initiatives from concept to customer , balancing speed, quality, and long-term scalability.

• Build “scrappy” solutions and proofs of concept where needed, while also guiding teams toward durable, enterprise-ready architectures.

Be a hands-on technical and analytical leader

• Maintain strong technical depth to review solution designs, data models, metrics, and analytics approaches.

• Partner with engineers and analysts to design scalable data pipelines, semantic layers, and reusable analytics assets.

• Apply structured problem-solving and analytical techniques (e.g., DMAIC, Design Thinking, experimentation, optimization) to ambiguous, high-impact merchandising problems.

• Use data storytelling to clearly communicate insights, tradeoffs, and recommendations to senior and executive stakeholders.

Build and lead high-performing teams

• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of product managers, stewards, and analysts , setting a high bar for craftsmanship, ownership, and impact.

• Establish best practices for product management, analytics delivery, data stewardship, and governance.

• Create an environment where associates are empowered to operate independently while staying aligned to shared goals and standards.

• Actively coach leaders and individual contributors on structured thinking, prioritization, and stakeholder influence.

Partner across Merchandising and Technology

• Serve as a trusted thought partner to Merchandising leaders, helping articulate business needs, frame problem statements, and define success metrics.

• Collaborate with Engineering, Enterprise Data Strategy, and platform teams to ensure solutions align with enterprise standards while meeting merchandising needs.

• Influence roadmaps across teams to drive convergence, reduce duplication, and improve speed-to-value.

Advance Merchandising Transformation

• Help shift Merchandising from reactive reporting to proactive, automated, and insight-driven decision-making .

• Champion consistent, trusted metrics and governance that increase confidence in data and reduce friction for associates.

• Enable AI-driven and agentic workflows by ensuring data foundations, context, and quality are fit for automation at scale.

What you'll bring..

• Building scalable analytics and data products that directly improve merchant decision-making across Demand, Assortment, Space, and Inventory.

• Driving adoption of governed metrics and shared data assets that increase trust and consistency across the enterprise.

• Delivering insights that improve availability, reduce markdowns, optimize inventory, enhance customer experience and integrate external data into workflows

• Developing leaders and teams that consistently deliver high-quality, high-impact solutions.

• Have strong business acumen in retail merchandising , with the ability to connect data and analytics to real-world merchant decisions.

• Are structured in your thinking and apply disciplined problem-solving to complex, ambiguous problems.

• Take a hands-on…