Director of Product Operations & PLM Systems

ALICE + OLIVIA•New York, NY

1d•$150,000 - $175,000•Onsite

About The Position

ALICE + OLIVIA is seeking a Director of Product Operations & PLM Systems to own the business process by which our product is developed and produced, and the platforms that process runs on. This is an operations role first. You will own the end-to-end business process across product development, production, technical design, patternmaking, fabric, trims, costing and grading, and you will own the systems that process runs on. You will work as the right hand to our SVP of Product Development & Production, acting as a trusted proxy across a large product organization and turning how we work from tribal knowledge into defined, documented, adopted processes. Process and platform are inseparable here. You will own our PLM platform outright and shape how process flows into the other systems in our product lifecycle. We are past implementation and into the harder part: making all of it genuinely useful to the people who live in it every day.

Requirements

10 or more years in apparel product development, production or product operations, with a product development foundation and responsibility for process across multiple functions.
A track record of designing and implementing operational process in a product organization, not only participating in it.
Deep knowledge of apparel production best practices, and a demonstrated ability to implement them in a working production environment.
Deep fluency in the apparel product lifecycle, including line planning, tech packs, fitting sessions, grading, costing, sourcing handoff and production release.
Hands-on ownership or administration of an enterprise PLM platform, not solely end-user experience. A traditional IT background is not required; process depth paired with real system ownership is what matters.
Experience where PLM is integrated with ERP and other downstream systems, including master data governance, and the ability to reason through what happens to a record that exists in two systems at once.
Working knowledge of 3D design tooling such as CLO3D and how it intersects with pattern and specification data.
Experience writing business requirements that vendors and technical teams can build against without translation.
Hands-on change management experience across teams that did not want to change how they work, including crafting the plan, implementing it, and managing the cultural change that comes with it.
The judgment and presence to operate as a senior leader's proxy in rooms where decisions get made.
Experience in a contemporary or luxury fashion environment operating on a compressed seasonal calendar.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Lectra Kubix Link specifically.
Exposure to vendor or supplier portal implementations.
Familiarity with the planning and ERP platforms that sit adjacent to PLM in a product lifecycle.
Experience managing software vendors through contract, scope, and delivery negotiation.
Experience building training programs for non-technical users across a large organization.

Responsibilities

Own end-to-end process design across the product organization, defining who does what, when, and in what sequence against the seasonal calendar.
Serve as the operational right hand to the SVP of Product Development & Production, representing the product organization in cross-functional decisions and carrying them through to execution.
Define calendar milestones and gate criteria so season readiness is visible and managed, rather than reconstructed after the fact.
Diagnose whether a breakdown is a training gap, a process gap or a system gap, and fix the right one instead of defaulting to a system request.
Map the downstream impact of process changes before they are made, and design the handoffs between teams so work does not stall at the seams.
Design process to cover the ground our platforms do not reach, including costing, sourcing and supply chain.
Bring a clear point of view on how our processes should improve, then lead the change management to make it stick.
Own the documentation, standard operating procedures and training that make process knowable, and keep them current.
Lead our cross-functional expert network, driving open items to decisions with named owners rather than letting them accumulate.
Own our PLM platform end to end, including configuration, taxonomy, templates, workflow design, user roles and release management.
Partner with IT to determine which system is the source of truth for which data, and define the rules teams follow when records span platforms.
Author business requirements and functional specifications directly, and manage our software vendors on scope, estimates and delivery.
Evaluate customization and enhancement requests against roadmap and cost, and sequence the work that matters.
Own data governance and the health of integrations with downstream systems, so issues are caught before they compound across a season.