Sr, Director, Decision Science & Business Intelligence

General Summary

Responsible for leading and evolving the merchandising analytics operating model, with a primary focus on advanced analytics, measurement discipline, and decision science enablement. Translates complex data into actionable recommendations by applying analytical toolkits and methods that support core merchandising workflows and initiative evaluation. Drives cross‑functional alignment to ensure insights are trusted, adopted, and delivered when merchants need them.

Duties & Responsibilities

• Assortment, Space and Productivity Analytics
• Deliver insights on assortment productivity (SKU performance, mix shifts, and rationalization).
• Provide decision support for key merchandising events (resets, transitions, and space allocation decisions).
• Support macro space optimization models and tooling.
• Ownership for micro assortment optimization systems and tooling.
• Self-Service Analytics & Data Quality Enablement (internal and external)
• Develop and maintain self-service dashboards and standardized datasets to reduce ad hoc reporting burden and improve speed-to-insight for merchants.
• Responsible for ensuring data validation and governance across key domain scope.
• Maintain partnerships with IT, Product and Data Engineering to support better integration and issue escalation / root cause analysis.
• Primary ownership for vendor data collaboration and commercialization.
• Initiative Reporting & Measurement (Test-and-Learn / Pilots)
• Establish measurement plans and reporting for merchandising initiatives (tests, pilots and rollouts), including success criteria, post-result readouts and sustained tracking.
• Ensure initiative reporting is actionable: highlight drivers, risks and recommended next actions.
• Pricing and Competitive Insights
• Provide pricing performance insights and competitive intelligence to inform merchant decisions.
• Build and maintain recurring competitive dashboarding. Surface material competitive shifts in the market that require action.
• Ownership for syndicated market data providers and relationships; internal reporting for market share tracking and opportunity identification.
• Team Leadership and Capability Building
• Set direction and standards for the team’s work. Establish and enforce clear standards for analytical methods, metric definitions, and dashboard logic to ensure outputs are consistent and decisionable.
• Develop talent and increase bench strength. Hire, coach and develop leaders and analysts; set goals, provide ongoing feedback and build succession plans that ensure continuity for critical reporting and decision-support capabilities.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Ability to lead and work collaboratively across business groups and functions to gain alignment towards goals.
• Advanced proficiency in data analysis, business intelligence, statical analysis and associated tooling (e.g. SQL, PowerBI, Tableau, R, Python, 1010data XML).
• Demonstrated strategic thinking, specifically on the use of data and analyses to drive business results.
• Strong communications skills: demonstrated ability to translate complicated subjects into easily digestible communications.
• Results-oriented leadership.
• Proven ability to manage and deliver a program of initiatives effectively: project management, cross-functional relationship development and key communication skills.

Work Experience &/or Education:

Bachelor’s degree in business or related technical field required. Minimum of 10 years of experience in retail, analytics, e-commerce or marketing analytics desired. Advanced degree is a plus.