Technology Director, Search and Recommendations
About The Position
The Technology Director leads the technical strategy, roadmap, architecture, and delivery for the company’s .com and mobile app products. The role partners with functional and technical leaders to identify capabilities needed for short- and long-term business needs, then develops and executes strategic plans that support key objectives in a timely and fiscally responsible manner. It drives strategic alignment across functions, applies research and market knowledge to inform strategy, and builds vendor relationships aligned with domain, portfolio, and enterprise objectives. The Director provides technical and domain thought leadership to drive business growth and translate vision into action. The role defines value propositions, success metrics, and outcomes; ensures quality and change-control standards; and develops reliable, repeatable processes and operational improvements. It balances internal operational metrics with external customer needs and communicates business value to teams and partners. The position also manages the strategic direction of staff, provides leadership and coaching to direct reports, and attracts, develops, motivates, and retains talent. It conducts annual and mid-year performance reviews and reviews individual development plans. The role typically reports to a Senior Director or Vice President and typically requires overnight travel 5% to 20% of the time.
Requirements
- Must be at least 18 years of age.
- Must be legally permitted to work in the United States.
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in a field of study related to the job, or the knowledge, skills, and abilities typically acquired through completion of such a program.
- At least 8 years of work experience.
- Experience defining, communicating, and driving value propositions, success metrics, and outcomes.
- Experience shaping, aligning, and guiding execution of strategic direction for a domain or significant portfolio segment.
- Ability to build influence and relationships with functional and technical leaders, strategic vendor partners, and people across organizational levels.
- Experience selecting and leading strategic vendor relationships or serving as the primary contact for strategic partnerships.
- Experience managing and developing direct reports who have their own span of control.
- Ability to apply deep market and industry knowledge in a related portfolio segment or domain to achieve strategic objectives.
Nice To Haves
- End-to-end ownership of Search, Personalization, and Recommendations platforms, including high-traffic e-commerce systems spanning relevance and ranking, query understanding, personalization logic, and large-scale experimentation, with accountability for conversion, engagement, revenue lift, and customer satisfaction across Pro and DIY journeys.
- Experience defining and driving multi-year platform strategies aligned to product and enterprise outcomes across merchandising, marketing/CRM, retail media, supply chain, and finance, with prioritization based on growth, efficiency, and customer impact.
- Experience establishing experiment-first operating models, including A/B testing, incrementality measurement, and multi-armed bandits, and overseeing ML-powered ranking and recommendation systems at production scale.
- Experience with unified behavioral data pipelines, real-time inference, feature stores, latency optimization, and resilience guardrails.
- Experience recruiting, developing, and retaining senior managers and staff/principal engineers; building inclusive, high-trust teams; and institutionalizing engineering and SRE practices such as CI/CD, trunk-based development, test automation, and DevOps.
- Experience partnering with VP-level and more senior leaders across Product, UX, Data Science, Marketing, Finance, Legal, Risk, and InfoSec; owning platform budgets and vendor strategy; and ensuring data privacy, security, compliance, and responsible experimentation and ML governance.
- Experience leading at a Senior Manager level or above within a fast-paced, multi-division, national company.
Responsibilities
- Partner with functional and technical leaders to identify and plan capabilities for short- and long-term business needs.
- Develop and execute strategic plans that support key objectives in a timely and fiscally responsible manner.
- Drive strategic alignment and partnerships with functional and technical peers and leaders.
- Connect information across organizational levels and related functions to understand the business holistically.
- Evaluate research and market analysis, meet with third-party vendors, and maintain knowledge of industry innovations and technology platforms to inform strategy.
- Establish and nurture strategic vendor relationships and influence vendors to align with domain, portfolio, and enterprise objectives.
- Apply technical and domain expertise to provide thought leadership and translate vision into action to drive business growth.
- Define and communicate value propositions, success metrics, and outcomes.
- Document and review work and ensure quality and change-control standards are met.
- Develop, plan, and implement sustainable, repeatable, and reliable processes; oversee process improvement.
- Drive operational excellence, internal customer satisfaction, and operational metrics while prioritizing external customer needs.
- Articulate value creation and the business proposition to teams and functional partners.
- Provide leadership, mentoring, and coaching to direct reports.
- Manage and coordinate strategic direction for staff.
- Attract, retain, develop, and motivate talent.
- Conduct annual and mid-year reviews, review individual development plans, and provide performance feedback.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Director
