About Sysco LABS
Sysco LABS is the innovation office of Sysco, the No. 1 foodservice distributor in the world. We make the software behind foodservice. Sysco customers use our ecommerce platform—Sysco Shop—to order everything from a dozen eggs to a dozen commercial ovens. With our software, chefs can click, order, and watch their deliveries en route, anytime, anywhere.
At Sysco LABS, our work matters: It carries food across the country. It sets 18-wheeler trucks in motion. It moves billions of dollars of fresh produce, meat, and restaurant supplies around the world. Here, your work matters too. You can have an immediate, global impact on our customers, on the way they run their food businesses, and on the way their food reaches the plate. Within our small, agile teams, you can own not just a small feature of a product—but a product itself.
You own the work. You own the outcome. Join Sysco LABS today.
Scope:
Develop and lead the product team to set the tone, establish partnership with engineering leadership and define product development and digital strategy for upcoming innovative products. Carry strategic responsibility for the performance, efficiency and leadership of the product teams. Collaboratively create and foster product vision, drive product strategy, manage product design, product development and UX research. As a senior executive, strive to be a role model to all of our Austin associates, nurturing a positive culture and helping them bridge the gap between start-up and enterprise mindsets.
Essential Functions:

• Provide strategic technical leadership for present and future product development efforts for the product team.
• Lead the product team with a focus on deeply understanding the needs of our customers (internal as well as external) through both quantitative and qualitative data and provide them with overwhelming value.
• Understand the competitive landscape for Sysco Corporation and overall trends in the food distribution industry, using these insights to shape our digital product strategy.
• Work with product leadership to hold them accountable to strategic direction and product standards.
• Manage and prioritize the product requirements process, converting input from customers, prospects, partners, sales, engineering, external market trends and competitors into a cohesive set of “features and functions” that are market-driven and can be feasibly delivered through internal development or relationships with third parties.
• Drive UX Research to conduct customer research and documents findings, create multiple consumer scenarios, and create strategy documents and content to supply to the collaborating product areas.
• Oversee the implementation of Product Design and Development policies, objectives and initiatives.
• Direct the design, development and enhancement of new and existing products.
• Partner with Engineering to set product and development strategy and vision with an eye towards balancing productivity and customer experience.
• Balance the quality, timeline and budget of product efforts in partnership with product and engineering leadership.
• Champion the technical and functional development of product managers.
• Coach managers in both their technical and professional development. Identify and coordinate training needs.
• Recruit, retain and develop exceptional product talent. Cultivate a positive company culture that values cross team collaboration and trust.
• Continuously optimize team and development processes. Define policies and procedures, as necessary.
• Market the product, acting as the lead evangelist for the product portfolio. Meet and interact directly with current and prospective internal and external customers in an effort to relay to them the products’ value and benefits while simultaneously sourcing feedback and assessing their reception and experience with the products.
• Oversee multiple parallel work streams in fast-paced, agile environment, align them with business priorities & deadlines, and help continuously raise the bar on execution.
• Display executive presence in all internal and external interactions, setting up the tone for other associates and building credibility when talking and/or presenting to all types of audiences, especially to our c-level stakeholders.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, business administration, information systems or related, or equivalent work experience.
• 10 years’ in management role leading a team of product managers.
• 12 years’ experience in product management, business consulting or related field.
• 6 years’ experience in product development.
• Experience in agile environment.
• Executive experience in Fortune 100 multinational companies.
• Proven strong skills in stakeholder management and internal evangelism. Ability to inspire and motivate the various teams and stakeholder groups and get everyone moving in the same direction.
• Achieve great buy-in and product adoption across the company as a result of amazing communication, training and marketing materials delivered appropriately to each different set of stakeholder audiences.

Preferred Qualifications

• Domain experience in the food distribution business.
• Technical software development knowledge encompassing modern cloud technologies such as Kafka, BFF and MFE.
• Practical experience in applying Design Thinking principles to create enterprise solutions.
• Experience with global digital platform deployments.
• Experience in building and managing offshore product management and product design teams.
• Experience in managing huge contractor/consulting engagements for staff augmentation, flexible capacity and fixed bid initiatives.