Director, Digital Platforms

New York City Ballet•New York, NY

3d•Onsite

About The Position

The Director, Digital Platforms serves as New York City Ballet’s digital product owner, leading the digital function within the company’s fast-paced Marketing and Media department and guiding a digital product roadmap across NYCB’s platforms, e-commerce systems, and the vendor and data infrastructure that power them for New York City Ballet and the David H. Koch Theater. The Director also owns website and e-commerce strategy, digital signage, and central governance of shared platforms and tools, and manages a small team executing that strategy day to day. The Director also drives cross-departmental digital governance standards across the whole organization.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree and 8+ years of experience directly owning digital platforms, e-commerce systems, or digital product management, with substantial experience in both directly managing a team and managing vendor/contract relationships.
Strong working knowledge of Tessitura required, along with comfort working with CMS platforms and ticketing/CRM systems generally.
Track record of leading full website redesigns or major platform migrations, from RFP through launch, and managing external vendor relationships and contracts.
Experience with fraud prevention and payment security practices (3DS, PCI DSS) in an e-commerce context.
Experience with data strategy, data governance, or building business cases for infrastructure investment; comfort leading initiatives that span multiple departments without direct authority over all participants.
Familiarity with data privacy regulations relevant to patron data.
Strong cross-departmental leadership skills and comfort convening and facilitating alignment across multiple key stakeholders.
Experience owning a departmental or team budget, including vendor and licensing spend, and building budget forecasts or business cases for major investments.
Familiarity with email marketing platforms and web analytics.
Excellent project/workflow management, problem-solving, analytical, written and oral communication skills.
Capacity to communicate technology and digital strategy issues to both technical and non-technical audiences, including senior management.
Ability and willingness to work occasional evenings and weekends, particularly around season on-sales and launches.
A demonstrated interest in the arts/culture, ballet, and/or NYCB a plus.

Responsibilities

Own overall digital platform and e-commerce strategy for NYCB and the David H. Koch Theater, spanning website, app, and e-commerce systems, digital signage, and the underlying vendor relationships and data infrastructure.
Serve as the organization’s digital product owner, translating business and audience priorities into a digital product roadmap across websites, e-commerce, and related platforms.
Set direction and final sign-off for annual NYCB and DHKT season build-outs and ticket on-sale readiness on the websites as executed by the Manager, E-Commerce & Digital Content, in coordination with Box Office, IT, Box Office and Customer Care, with the internal teams (i.e. Marketing, Education, Development) responsible for each on-sale for testing and troubleshooting support.
Serve as the clearinghouse for website content prioritization across the organization, deciding the substance and prominence of content featured on the homepage, internal pages and purchase path of both nycballet.com and davidhkochtheater.com.
Lead strategic structured experimentation (A/B testing and conversion rate optimization) on the ticketing purchase funnel, balancing conversion improvements against user experience, accessibility and security considerations.
Own digital and e-commerce strategy for David H. Koch Theater third-party rentals, partnering with the Theatre’s management team and rental marketing and ticketing teams as needed.
Own strategic, contract-level relationships with website/e-commerce development vendor, digital ticket delivery provider, and third-party sales distribution partners.
As the largest internal client of the organization’s Tessitura instance, work in tandem with IT’s Tessitura staff on shared strategy and ongoing platform management – particularly as it pertains to web and digital platform functionality, including coordinating digital platform testing around vendor-driven updates and upgrades.
Lead contract-level project management of external vendors for new platform builds, redesigns, and major upgrades, in conjunction with the Manager, E-Commerce & Digital Content.
Own platform reliability and vendor SLA management across the digital vendor stack, monitoring uptime expectations and incident escalation practices.
Maintain a recurring vendor contract review and renewal cadence that cohesively considers budget forecasting, tool reassessment, and relationship management.
Periodically evaluate emerging digital tools and vendors with an eye to revenue generation and efficiency opportunities, bringing recommendations forward as appropriate to Senior Director and senior leadership.
Own fraud-prevention and chargeback-reduction strategy for NYCB’s e-commerce channels, including guardrails such as 3D Secure (3DS) and bot/queue protection, staying current on emerging fraud-prevention practices as they evolve, and partnering with IT and Finance on the organization’s broader security and PCI DSS compliance efforts.
Own central, cross-departmental governance of email deployment platform, including access, organizational list segmentation standards, and best practices for all departments sending patron communications, and lead periodic reassessment of core email marketing tools against organizational needs.
Maintain an active relationship with email marketing platform vendor to stay current on new features, train new and existing staff on platform updates and identify opportunities to grow engagement and revenue through email marketing.
Investigate and make recommendations on data strategy and personalization across all digital touchpoints, partnering with relevant departmental leadership and IT to assess feasibility and build institutional buy-in.
If such initiatives are pursued, lead modeling, forecasting and business case development for a centralized data initiative, in partnership with the Senior Director, Marketing & Media and CFO.
Own data privacy and compliance strategy for patron data across digital channels.
Stay abreast of developments in state and federal legislation around privacy, ticket sales and pricing practices (i.e. pricing transparency, resale/scalping laws), ensuring NYCB’s digital ticketing practices remain compliant.
Own API/integrations architecture governance across NYCB’s digital vendor stack, ensuring systems are designed to work together seamlessly.
Convene and lead a standing digital governance function bringing together Marketing & Media, Development/Corporate Relations, Special Events, Education and IT on a regular cadence to align platform priorities, data strategy, and content placement — with shared objectives and metrics embedded across all departments.
As institutional AI initiatives are developed, begin exploring approaches to generative AI tool use across the organization’s digital platforms, including disclosure norms and patron data handling; collaborate with broader institution stakeholders on AI governance ownership.
Manage hiring, professional development, and performance for the Manager, E-Commerce & Digital Content and the Coordinator.
Own the digital team’s budget, including vendor contracts, platform licensing, and tooling.
Set goals/KPIs for digital channel performance and represent the digital function to senior company management, including periodic presentation of a digital roadmap.
Lead major cross-functional initiatives — including full website redesigns, platform migrations, and new digital function initiatives — from strategy through launch.