Director Digital Product Design [T500-24145]

About Albertsons Companies Inc:

As a leading food and drug retailer in the United States, Albertsons Companies, Inc. operates over 2,200 stores across 35 states and the District of Columbia. Our well-known banners across the United States, including Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco and others, serve more than 36 million U.S customers each week.

We build and shape technology solutions that solve customers problems every day, making things easier for them when they shop with us online or in a store. We have made bold, strategic moves to migrate and modernize our core foundational capabilities, positioning ourselves as the first fully cloud-based grocery tech company in the industry.

Our success is built on a one-team approach, driven by the desire to understand and enhance the customer experience. By constantly pushing the boundaries of retail, we are transforming shopping into an experience that is easy, efficient, fun and engaging.

About Albertsons Companies India:

At Albertsons Companies India, we're not just pushing the boundaries of technology and retail innovation, we're cultivating a space where ideas flourish and careers thrive. Our workplace in India is a vital extension of the Albertsons Companies Inc. workforce and important to the next phase in the companys technology journey to support millions of customers lives every day.

At the Albertsons Companies India, we are raising the bar to grow across Technology & Engineering, AI, Digital and other company functions, and transform a 165-year-old American retailer. At Albertsons Companies India associates collaborate directly with international teams, enhancing decision-making processes and organizational agility through exciting and pivotal projects. Your work will make history and help millions of lives each day come together around the joys of food and inspire their well-being.

Director, Digital Product Design

Position Purpose:

The Director of Digital Product Design leads the user experience vision and strategy for Source-to-Table (STT) products across Albertsons Companies 18 banner brands. This role is responsible for designing intuitive, scalable experiences that support a best-in-class omnichannel grocery networkensuring accurate inventory, reliable fulfillment, and seamless execution from supply to customer order.

This position will have a pivotal role of driving effective collaboration with product, engineering, data science, and operations partners, the Director drives human-centered design solutions that leverage AI, advanced data models, and intelligent tasking to empower associates, optimize operational workflows, and enhance the end-to-end grocery experience. This leader builds and mentors high-performing design teams while ensuring design outcomes align with business goals and deliver measurable impact across the Source-to-Table ecosystem.

The ideal candidate will have a user first mentality as well as grounding in design thinking as a way to change our business. A deep understanding of user research, knowledge gathering, ideation, prototyping, and design process and concept visualization/prototyping are baseline for this role. He or she should bring multiple years of experience both building and leading design teams including designers, principals, and other managers.

Key Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

eCommerce User Experience Strategy, Innovation Design and Oversight (40%):

• Think thru and communicate concepts visually using techniques like journey mapping, storyboards and sketching, and
• Serve as a leading voice of the customers, associates, and partners and act as an experience advocate in considering ecommerce decisions that will impact the customer
• Ensure that conceptual designs and wireframes meet high standards and business goals for quality
• Champion a point-of-view to leadership regarding the relative importance of various initiatives that are ready to move to the development phase
• Guide user experience leads to ensure research and designs are well understood by product managers and stakeholders
• Support and guide team members as they ideate, collaborate, and design new experiences for in the Albertson's ecosphere
• Set the strategic vision for the user experience and socialize that vision with the company and employees
• Define and measure metrics to track user satisfaction both overall and specific to strategic development
• Develop, refine, and guide team through transition to leaner UX design practices

People Leadership (30%):

• Coach User Experience Leads as they respond to project escalations with an assessment of the business implications of changes to project scope, timeline, or resources
• Develop, lead and inspire the User Experience team members, each responsible for defining and delivering ecommerce research and user experience design
• Create and foster career development and growth paths for team members in alignment with company, product and personal objectives
• Create clear and measurable goals and objectives for the team related to the creation of designs and research reports, high-quality that support critical business objectives, and partnership with cross-functional teams
• Raise awareness of team's plans, insights and accomplishments in order to facilitate cooperation across departments and to build a highly performing, highly motivated team
• Assist direct reports with ongoing prioritization and resource allocation to ensure that the crucial business initiatives are delivered
• Hiring, retention, and succession planning
• Attract, develop and retain top UX design talent

Executive Stakeholder Management: (20%):

• Lead teams in partnering with key business stakeholders and strategy team members to develop clear and insights, designs, and research and present to senior management the information necessary to make informed approval, prioritization and tradeoff decisions
• Ensure that all relevant parties and key stakeholders are informed of user experience design and research status from concept through launch
• Develop and maintain relationships with key business owners and senior management
• Support senior leadership and the technology organization in developing and improving product development, product management and project management practices

Functional/Organizational Development: (10%):

• Lead User Experience efforts in developing and implementing scalable processes and/or tools to enable functional productivity
• Develop and refine the user centered design process within the product management lifecycle

Qualifications:

• Education / Experience: 8-10 years relevant professional experience required, BS/BA degree required, Graduate studies preferred
• Communication Skills: Must be able to clearly communicate, sell, persuade at all levels of management, up, down and across organization
• UX Specific Skills: 7-9 years' experience in one or more of the following areas: user experience, information architecture, or creative design
• Internet and retail experience strongly preferred
• 3-5 years' experience managing direct reports and managers
• Experience managing teams
• Internet and Retail experience highly desirable
• Strong analytical, prioritization and negotiating skills.
• Usability and customer-focused design experience required
• Passionate about building great user experiences and solving customer and business problems
• Reasoning Ability: The most successful candidates will be not only self-starting, but opportunity identifying and able to put a plan together to achieve success in collaboration but minimal supervision from VP leadership
• Decision Making: Is this individual the final authority on what the user experience sees as important in terms of vision delivery. This role will participate in the clear and consistent delivery of a unified experience cross channel/device and, advisory responsibility over evaluation of high value work and the process governing the work.
• Supervisory Responsibility: Will manage approximately 3-5 direct reports with approximately 2 layers of associate below them
• Work Hours: Full time, flexible, in office, with satellite offices and stores, and as needed