Technical Leadership and Innovation Director

3 days ago

Lake Forest, Illinois, United States Grainger Businesses Full time

Grainger Businesses is a leading broad line distributor with operations in North America, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Our purpose is to serve more than 4.5 million customers with a wide range of products that keep their operations running and their people safe. We deliver services and solutions, such as technical support and inventory management, to save customers time and money.

We're looking for a passionate leader who can drive our company forward. As one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For, we have a welcoming workplace where you can build a career for yourself while fulfilling our purpose to keep the world working. We embrace new ways of thinking and recognize everyone is an individual.

The Sr. Manager, Business Systems - Application Administration is accountable for a world-class enterprise technology experience in North America. This leader ensures Grainger team members are equipped with the most relevant and effective technology capabilities to help them serve Grainger's customers with ease and confidence.

The role supports all areas of Grainger's business, including Sales, Contact Centers, Branches, Distribution Centers, and Digital channels. This role provides strategic leadership and guidance to operations managers, engineers, and administrators, and provides key input to product and portfolio management processes for all domains.

As a Technical Leadership and Innovation Director, you will be responsible for fostering a culture of continuous improvement and innovation, bridging traditional operational practices with more modern approaches to shore up operational processes and provide world-class user support.

You will lead a team of 100+ employees and contractors to support Grainger's technology platforms and services in collaboration with our customers, suppliers, and team members to be optimized and relevant. You will champion and influence the design and transformation of foundational business to a more effective Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and sustainable resiliency.

The salary for this role is estimated to be between $150,000 and $250,000 per year, depending on experience and location.

Key Responsibilities:

  • Provide strategic direction to Engineers, Analysts, and Operations leaders in support of Grainger's business objectives using measurable key results to hold team members accountable.
  • Create an environment where innovation and creativity are celebrated with a strong consistent foundation in efficient and effective resilient systems.
  • Coach and develop technical talent, helping to make Grainger and GTG a top-talent magnet. Achieve this through a comprehensive staffing plan, aligned with our technology roadmap to understand where we should be investing and know how to grow that talent internally.
  • Participate, contribute, and collaborate with Engineering leadership team in building roadmaps and operationalizing new technology coming down the pipeline.
  • Use industry best practice metrics to monitor the health and productivity of the teams, implement improvements when necessary.
  • Partner with key stakeholders to better understand how to meet customer and team member needs ensuring alignment with our core principles and strategic vision.
  • Ensure teams are making design decisions that enable independent releases, support resiliency of systems, and that tradeoffs are understood and align to high-level goals.
  • Ensure effective monitoring, timely and high-quality communication and alerting when service disruptions occur. Lead and coordinate large cross-functional recovery efforts for incidents (Code Red/Escalated Condition) to minimize downtime and lost revenue, when appropriate.
  • Recognize achievements and inspire team members to exceed expectations with positive reinforcements.
  • Demonstrate endless curiosity across all domains and seek growth opportunities for knowledge.

Requirements:

  • 7+ years experience managing application engineering, operations, or similar development teams.
  • B.S. in Computer Science / MIS or related field a plus.
  • Strong service-based experience and delivery. Experience with delivery methodologies such as Agile, Scrum & other iterative delivery approaches (Dev/Ops), Strong understanding of ITIL practices such as Incident, Change, and Problem Management.
  • Strong experience with SAP.
  • Strong experience managing competing priorities across multiple stakeholder groups.
  • Experience in partnering with engineering organizations to effectively address technical debt to drive better user experience and decrease ticket volume.
  • Must be able to express complex technical concepts effectively, both verbally and in writing.
  • Demonstrated ability to motivate, mentor, coach and lead large technical teams; must be able to work directly with individuals at all levels of the Company.
  • Strong continuous improvement problem-solving and mentoring skills.
  • Ability to manage complex vendor/supplier relationships, including contract negotiation, ongoing maintenance & support, navigating contractual audits and problem-resolution.

DEI Statement:

We are committed to equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression, or veteran status. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.

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