Vice President, Digital Products and Technology

Overview

Forever 21 is a fashion industry leader making the latest trends accessible to all while inspiring unique style and confidence. With a renewed focus on the customer experience, the brand offers high style designs and fashion basics with compelling values and a dynamic store environment. While driving innovation across e-commerce and digital to expand access and convenience, the brand continues to strengthen its positioning as today’s preferred destination for the fashionable consumer. Forever 21 is located in more than 540 locations globally and online, and we’re seeking passionate and creative people to join our Forever family.

Forever 21 is looking for a seasoned, passionate Digital Transformation leader to take on the role of VP, Digital Products and Technology reporting into the Sr. Vice President of Digital Technology, Engineering and Data with leadership responsibility across all digital technologies including Ecommerce, Digital Marketing, Customer Service and Marketplace.

• Are you an ecommerce marketplace leader looking for a new opportunity to chart and implement the technology roadmap for an international omnichannel retail platform?
• Do you have solid experience leading a company’s digital transformation and driving its digital technology?
• Would you thrive in an environment where you have broad exposure to leadership across many brands?

If you answered yes to these questions, this exciting role may be your next career step. This is an opportunity to own and drive one of the most important initiatives in the company. World-class customer experience, operational excellence and retail innovation through digital products are essential pursuits of this well-supported, highly visible role.

The ideal candidate for this role will have a background leading and managing ecommerce technology for an omnichannel retail company. If you have deep knowledge of tools such as Mirakl and Salesforce Commerce as well as experience with technology related to SEO, customer loyalty and retention and data analytics, this may be your ideal career opportunity.

This role will directly oversee Digital IT teams driving omnichannel customer experiences through Forever 21 digital properties. She/he/they will be responsible for user experience and site operations and analytics, product roadmap, engineering, technical development and release process across the digital platforms. The VP will provide leadership for all transformation initiatives across all-digital systems, specifically ecommerce (Salesforce Commerce Cloud), mobile app, order management, customer service, drop ship, marketplace and omnichannel capabilities. People management and driving a more product-driven agile culture will be part of the responsibility. The right candidate will feel comfortable wearing multiple hats in a fast-paced and high-growth environment.

The VP, Digital Products will be part of both the Forever 21 Executive Leadership Team, as well as the SPARC Digital Leadership team.

Responsibilities

• Owns customer experience and product roadmap across all digital touchpoints focusing on customer centricity
• Leads User Experience design, Product Management and Engineering functions to deliver new features and functionality in conjunction with the technology team
• Drives data-driven culture and decision making and is deeply familiar with web funnel optimization, A/B testing and personalization
• Drives technology strategy and implementation for Marketplace and international operations
• Enables technology for fulfilment and omni-channel vision/strategy by partnering with retail team supply chain and leads online execution of channel-agnostic strategy
• Leads and develops multifunctional, high-performing e-commerce/digital teams; manages distributed scrum teams of product managers, engineers and quality assurance
• Manages supplier relationship and compliance for all partners and system integrators for digital engineering
• Manages operating budget on the technology side and drives continuous improvement through efficiencies and innovation
• Works cross functionally with partners in the Distribution Center, IT, Community, Digital team and Store Operations to ensure efficiency in both back- and front-end operations for a flawless guest experience
• Remains up to date on current and emerging technologies and trends and how they can be incorporated into the existing business plan
• Responsible for the development, integration, and ongoing support of any new technical strategies or processes in relation to web page design and optimization, applications development, and search engine optimization
• Analyzes current and projected ROIs on all initiatives to assist in long-term planning for the department and its multiple functions
• Maintains an informed POV on site UI/UX opportunities for optimization of conversion and margin, for both website and mobile app
• Owns communication to both F21 and SPARC leadership with respect to the F21 Digital Technologies
• Partners with Digital business leadership to deliver digital capabilities on the technology platform. VP of Digital Products and Technology will be focused on enabling the right set of products and technologies across channels in an agile release cadence.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Information systems with deep understanding of digital technologies
• Must have 15 years of strategic ecommerce technology management experience, preferably within apparel and/or specialty retail and or tech companies, with the proven ability to develop and implement a successful ecommerce technology; 5 years of senior management–level experience required
• Prior experience in some or all of the following technology areas is essential: conversion improvement, customer loyalty and retention, search engine optimization, online/mobile marketing, web analytics, customer service, and E-commerce order fulfillment and distribution/shipping, drop ship and marketplace
• Strong technology knowledge/background is a must-have. This includes a conceptual understanding of Clouds and Microservices based architecture, ecommerce and digital marketing technologies, CRM and loyalty systems, customer service technologies, order management, drop ship and marketplace technologies
• Exercising a deep understanding of customer touch points (store, web, phone, etc.) across all channels
• Must be skilled at using analytics to drive decision-making
• SaFe Agile practitioner perferred
• Knowledge of the tools, methods and approaches that are driving higher conversion rates, increased average order value and acquisition techniques
• Experience leading digital teams across User Experience, Product Management, Digital Marketing and Web Merchandising
• Expertise in loyalty techniques and cross-channel analytics and measurement
• Ability to recruit, train, develop, evaluate, discipline, reward, coach a team in a way that attracts and retains high quality and qualified employees
• Proven leadership ability, stakeholder management and excellent communication skills—verbal and written

ADDITIONAL DATA 

The salary range for this position is $226,887 - $285,090 annually. Pay is based on several factors including but not limited to position offered and work experience.In addition to your salary, Forever 21, and its affiliated brands, offers a benefits package, including 401(k) plan, overtime pay, flexible work schedule and a generous employee discount program (all benefits are based on eligibility). Additional information regarding the benefits for this position can be found in the Benefits Guide that is available in our Human Resources Department.

Salary : $226,887 - $285,090