Whole Foods Market attracts people who are passionate—about great food, about the communities they live and work in, about how we treat our planet and our fellow humans—and who want to bring their passion into the workplace and make a difference. The Whole Foods Market Tech Team is looking for people who also want to bring their expertise and passion for technology to drive innovation and support Whole Food’s strategic vision.

The Executive Leader, Product Management develops a team of Product Managers in defining solutions for the company, including Point of Sale, Supply Chain, Merchandising, eCommerce, and Digital. The individual is responsible for leading his/her team in both defining the vision and measuring the effectiveness and success of the solution. S/he is responsible for setting strategic direction across the entire portfolio and is empowered to make necessary decisions to bring the strategy to fruition. This person is an expert in Product Management and has the ability to develop, lead, and inspire the team to the highest standards of deliverables and in collaborating effectively with end-users, customers, engineers, architects and senior leadership.
In annual strategic planning cycles you will work closely with engineering and other leaders to develop a portfolio strategy that aligns with the strategic objectives of the company, delivers high financial returns, and creates value for our customers. S/he will develop and implement processes that enable the team to deliver and successfully execute the portfolio strategy while continuing to raise the bar for future success.

Ideal candidates will think big and have a strong bias for action, while earning trust through their desire to learn and be curious, invent and simplify, dive deep, insist on highest standards and work back from the customer. Given the complexity of the portfolio, it will also be important to be operationally strong – managing many relationships, dependencies, and timelines across many teams.

Responsibilities

Team Leadership

• Leading and developing a team of highly specialized Product Managers.
• Ensuring team objectives and activities align and support broader technology and organization-wide objectives.
• Identifying and drives process improvement initiatives within his/her team as well as across the technology organization
• Ensuring effective career succession, replacement, and individual/team development within his/her team.
• Planning, estimating, staffing, organizing, and monitoring significant project activities.
• Defining strategies and approaches to empower and equip his/her team to be effective in interactions with internal and external stakeholders.

Product Management

• Contributing to and influencing the long-range strategic planning for his/her portfolio as well as the broader technology function.
• Identifying net new capabilities or architectural investments needed to support and accelerate expansion and working with engineering technology services teams to ensure we create scalable and repeatable solutions.
• Developing product roadmaps spanning 3+ months to 5 years, including influencing Amazon and third-party vendor roadmaps to achieve goals.
• Driving the creation of business cases for all proposed roadmap initiatives, inclusive of detailed costs, ROI valuations, development of success metrics and alignment to strategic company goals.
• Managing and meeting the needs of senior stakeholders, including conducting executive leadership proposal or program reviews in the form of written Word documents, publishing post-launch metrics, and escalating to drive decision-making.
• Developing deep, credible relationships with senior-level executives, both inside and outside current areas of responsibility.
• Engaging with senior-level stakeholders to define, clarify and resolve issues arising through project design, development, execution, or implementation.
• Setting up mechanisms for receiving feedback and adjusting priorities to ensure the right customer, technology, and engineering outcomes.
• Monitoring industry and the competition for technical and process changes and advances.

Qualifications

• Current or previous experience at Amazon or Amazon subsidiary working on joint projects with Amazon preferred
• 10+ years of relevant experience in product management
• 5+ years leading highly functioning teams of technical and non-technical skilled professionals
• MBA preferred
• 1+ years of experience extracting data using SQL
• 2+ years of advanced Microsoft Excel skills

• 5 + years developing Point of Sale, Supply Chain, Merchandising, eCommerce, and/or Digital products
• Experience within the large program delivery and grocery business areas a plus
• Strategic technology planning and execution experience as well as policy development and maintenance
• Ability to effectively drive people, process and technology change in a dynamic and complex operating environment
• Fearless — not afraid to suggest or back big ideas. Tenacious — able to push back and focus the discovery process
• Excellent oral and written communication skills. This includes the ability to explain system concepts and technologies to business leaders, as well as business concepts to technologists, and the ability to sell ideas and processes internally at all levels and especially to senior leadership.
• Strong analytical and quantitative skills; ability to use hard data and metrics to back up assumptions, recommendations, and drive actions.
• Strengths in problem solving, issue-resolution, ability to work in a deadline-driven work environment, high attention to detail, and ability to multitask
• Experience collaborating with engineering leadership to create an effective delivery organization
• Expert at creating "working backwards documents" and plans
• Experience effectively managing a portfolio of products and programs simultaneously

This position is based in Austin; domestic relocation assistance is available.

At Whole Foods Market, we provide a fair and equal employment opportunity for all Team Members and candidates regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, age, marital status, disability, or any other legally protected characteristic. Whole Foods Market hires and promotes individuals solely based on qualifications for the position to be filled and business needs.