Director, Product Operations

Levi Strauss & Co.•San Francisco, CA

2d•$167,300 - $230,000•Hybrid

About The Position

As the Director, Product Operations, you will build and lead the infrastructure, standards, and analytics that enable how our company costs, sources, and places product across a global apparel business — strongly facilitating and empowering the teams who do this work rather than performing the costing directly. You will partner with cross-functional and digital teams to strengthen the tools, data, and processes that support faster, better-informed decisions. You will own the analytics and standards that guide costing and production placement — balancing the range of factors that shape sound sourcing and placement decisions — while providing the product-creation applications support and system stability the business relies on to keep operations running and continuously improving. This is a leadership role that partners closely with the VP, Product Operations and offers significant scope, visibility, and growth for a strategic, digitally fluent operator.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree required
12+ years experience in Product Operations, Sourcing, Supply Chain, Procurement, or Costing in a global apparel, consumer goods, or vertical retail environment.
Experience leading costing, sourcing, or analytics functions, including building standards, teams, and governance.
Track record leading process and system improvement, including work with PLM, costing, or sourcing platforms; deep should-cost modeling and eRFX expertise.
AI-experience, with hands-on experience designing or deploying AI-enabled tools.
Fluency in applying analytics and modern digital tools — including AI and machine learning — to costing, sourcing, scenario planning, and workflow automation.
Comfort with modern data tooling — Power BI, Airtable, Power Automate, SQL fundamentals — plus advanced Excel and PLM expertise.
Deep understanding of the apparel go-to-market calendar, costing lifecycle, RFQ processes, vendor negotiation, and placement decisions.
Command of the key drivers of total landed cost, and experience codifying costing standards into enterprise tools.
Proven executive presence and strategic leadership, with the ability to partner effectively with C-suite, SVP, and VP stakeholders, translate complex analysis into actionable business insights, and lead enterprise-wide, P&L-impacting initiatives and business cases.
Track record of building and developing teams.

Responsibilities

Establish and maintain costing methodology, cost driver libraries, and benchmarking standards.
Lead a team of costing analyst(s), and develop the guides and training that institutionalize costing rigor and best practice.
Partner with Finance on margin governance and target costing to support healthy, predictable product margins.
Serve as a key business partner to Digital & Technology on the tools and platforms that support product development, costing, sourcing, and placement.
Translate business needs into clear requirements, and help shape modern, data-driven capabilities that improve speed, accuracy, and traceability.
Lead change management, training, and adoption across stakeholder communities, and track the outcomes that measure success.
Lead the analytics that inform production award decisions, balancing the key factors that drive optimal sourcing and placement.
Build scenario modeling and what-if analyses that support well-reasoned placement recommendations.
Govern the key data inputs that inform sourcing and placement decisions, and deliver clear, decision-ready insights to leadership.
Oversee the support of core product and costing systems (e.g., PLM and BOM tools), ensuring reliable performance for global users.
Establish triage protocols, service levels, and escalation paths, partnering with IT to resolve issues and protect go-to-market deadlines.
Maintain and enhance existing tools to keep product, costing and placement processes running smoothly, supported by user training and super-user networks.
Partner with Product Development, Sourcing, and Finance to align on costing and placement ways of working.
Lead workshops and executive readouts, and represent Product Operations in cross-functional governance forums.
Develop a high-performing team with a culture of ownership and continuous improvement.