Sr Manager Merchandising Space Operations

Ulta Beauty, Inc.•Bolingbrook, IL

About The Position

The Senior Manager of Merchandising Space Operations will lead the strategy, design and implementation of a new operating framework for planning, governing and optimizing short-term retail space across all stores, including secondary placements, promotional space, and seasonal opportunities. This role will establish the long-term end-to-end scalable process that aligns merchandising, planning, visual/creative and store execution teams to maximize the productivity of short-term space while creating a consistent, cross-functional approach to planning and execution. This role partners directly with cross-functional senior leadership in Merchandising, Planning, Visual Merchandising, Creative, Marketing, Store Operations, and Inventory to translate the merchandising and visual merchandising strategy into the tactical operations to execute across multiple teams. It is critical to develop a prioritization framework balancing brand goals, financial strategies, marketing timelines, and operational communication to inventory teams. Integration with the go-to-market process, project organization skills, and cross-team collaboration are critical for success in this role. The successful candidate will assess current processes, identify opportunities for improvement, and design a comprehensive framework that balances customer experience, commercial objectives, and operational feasibility. A key focus of the role will be driving cross-functional alignment with senior leaders and adoption by engaging stakeholders, building clear governance structures, and embedding decision-making processes that support effective execution. The position will have 1 direct report that will be responsible for executing planograms and assignments of assortments to stores.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Retail Management, a related field or equivalent experience
8+ years of progressive experience in corporate retail: operations, space/floor planning, financial planning or merchandising
3+ years of people leadership experience, including managing managers preferred
Strong strategic mindset, with critical reasoning and qualitative analysis experience (Power BI, Excel)
Self-starter able to successfully execute against departmental goals with minimal guidance
Proven leadership experience, with the ability to motivate and inspire team members.
Able to influence and drive accountability among associates across multiple departments
Able to develop presentation materials for communicating strategies to key stakeholders
Enthusiastic, persistent, action-oriented, and a strong sense of accountability
Detail-oriented with a passion for accuracy and quality assurance.
Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, dynamic environment and manage competing priorities effectively.
Strategic, analytical, and conceptual problem solver with the ability to look into the details and interpret the impact of key business drivers, detect patterns and trends across disparate sources of data, creatively analyze unfamiliar problems and synthesize the ‘so what’s’
Financially savvy and analytical, ability to gather, understand and analyze data and performance metrics essential to building a strategy within the growing and constantly changing landscape
Demonstrated ability to communicate, leveraging interpersonal skills, problem solving and decision-making ability to quickly influence, establish relationships, gain credibility and trust with all audience levels

Responsibilities

Develop and implement a standardized framework for planning assortments within short-term, secondary, and promotional space ensuring alignment with merchandising priorities and long-term business objectives.
Define planning principles, decision criteria, and processes that support strategic space allocation and assortment optimization balancing customer experience, commercial objectives, inventory productivity, and operational execution.
Influence and align senior leaders across Merchandising, Inventory Planning, Space Planning, Visual Merchandising, Store Operations, and Analytics teams to ensure alignment and resolve competing priorities, and ensure consistent execution.
Design and oversee governance models, decision rights, roles, responsibilities, and cross-functional operating processes that enable scalable execution, accelerate decision-making, and improve organizational effectiveness.
Form clear checkpoints for Merch leadership approval in the execution and development of Visual Merchandising and creative strategies.
Create and implement success metrics, KPIs, and reporting mechanisms to measure effectiveness, compliance, and business impact.
Identify opportunities to improve space productivity, promotional performance, and customer engagement through data-driven insights.
Drive change management activities, stakeholder communication, and training to ensure successful adoption of the new framework.
Deliver recommendations for continuous improvement and long-term scalability.