Director of Supply Chain Applications

National Vision•Alpharetta, GA

11h

About The Position

The Director of Supply Chain Applications leads the design, development, implementation, support, and modernization of technology platforms that enable the company’s supply chain operations. The role is accountable for the performance and long-term direction of the supply chain application portfolio, translating operational priorities into reliable, scalable solutions in partnership with business and technology leaders. It guides the transition from legacy platforms to modern cloud-based solutions while maintaining business continuity, managing technology risk, and ensuring critical systems continue to meet evolving business needs. The Director owns the supply chain application portfolio, including strategy, delivery, maintenance, production support, and lifecycle planning. This includes oversight of a heavily customized JDA environment running on IBM i (AS/400 / iSeries), its RPG programs, CL processing, database interactions, batch workflows, and interfaces. The role sets technical direction, reviews complex code and application changes, assesses downstream impacts, and guides production troubleshooting. It also oversees ALDON source control, change management, and release processes. The Director partners with leaders across Supply Chain, Distribution, Merchandising, and Finance to translate operational requirements into roadmaps and technology investments. The position establishes application development and support standards, documents business rules and dependencies, and works with Infrastructure and Operations to strengthen availability, performance, security, disaster recovery, business continuity, and batch reliability. It leads application modernization and transformation planning and communicates application health, delivery progress, risks, and investment recommendations to business and technology leadership. The role also assists with developing, reviewing, and complying with IT policies and procedures.

Requirements

At least 9 years of related experience working on IBM i (AS/400 / iSeries).
Demonstrated leadership of application development and support teams responsible for business-critical systems.
Demonstrated success leading enterprise application portfolios supporting supply chain, distribution, retail, merchandising, or other large-scale operational functions.
Extensive experience supporting and enhancing highly customized packaged applications with complex business rules, interfaces, and integration dependencies.
Proven experience leading supply chain or merchandising platform modernization, replacement, or migration initiatives in complex operational environments.
Four-year college degree or equivalent experience in information technology, computer science, or a related field.
Extensive hands-on RPG development experience on IBM i, including reading, debugging, evaluating, and providing technical direction for heavily customized legacy code.
Strong familiarity with older fixed-format RPG and experience with RPG III, RPG IV / ILE RPG, and newer RPG approaches, as applicable to the environment.
Strong working knowledge of CL, Db2 for i, DDS, physical and logical files, libraries, jobs, job queues, job logs, and batch-processing environments.
Substantial hands-on experience using ALDON for IBM i source management, change control, release governance, and application promotion.
Strong understanding of end-to-end supply chain processes, including purchasing, inventory management, replenishment, allocation, distribution, and fulfillment.
Ability to translate technical constraints and business needs into clear priorities, practical delivery plans, and well-supported investment decisions.
Working knowledge of SQL, EDI, APIs, file-based interfaces, and enterprise integration patterns.

Nice To Haves

Experience sunsetting a legacy JDA/IBM environment and migrating to a modern SaaS solution such as Oracle.

Responsibilities

Oversee development of critical applications and technology in support of the company’s long-term goals.
Own the supply chain application portfolio, including strategy, delivery, maintenance, production support, and lifecycle planning.
Oversee the customized JDA environment running on IBM i and its supporting applications and business processes.
Provide technical direction for the customized JDA platform, including RPG programs, CL processing, database interactions, batch workflows, and interfaces.
Review complex code and application changes, assess downstream impacts, and guide production-issue troubleshooting.
Oversee ALDON source control, change management, and release processes, including dependency management, approvals, environment promotion, deployment readiness, and rollback planning.
Partner with Supply Chain, Distribution, Merchandising, and Finance leaders to translate operational requirements into scalable solutions, roadmaps, and informed technology investments.
Document critical business rules, customizations, interfaces, and operational dependencies.
Define and maintain application development and support standards covering solution design, coding, testing, documentation, production support, release management, and change control.
Partner with Infrastructure and Operations teams to strengthen application availability, performance, security, disaster recovery, business continuity, and batch-processing reliability.
Lead application modernization and transformation planning, including discovery, requirements analysis, process assessment, solution evaluation, data mapping, migration planning, and transition readiness.
Communicate application health, delivery progress, risks, and investment recommendations to business and technology leadership.
Assist in developing, reviewing, and complying with IT policies and procedures, including project approval, signature authority, information security, disaster recovery, and business continuity processes.
Lead high-priority production incident resolution, root-cause analysis, corrective action, and long-term risk mitigation.
Identify, validate, and document business rules embedded within legacy source code.