About the company

Albertsons Companies is at the forefront of the revolution in retail. With a fixation on innovation and building culture, our team is rallying our company around a unique vision: forging a retail winner that is admired for national strength, deep roots in the communities we serve, and a team that has passion for food and delivering great service.

Albertsons is one of the largest retail employers, providing approximately 300,000 jobs across 2,200 stores, 22 distribution centers, 20 food and beverage plants and various support offices. We operate in 34 states and the District of Columbia under the Albertsons banner, as well as Safeway, Tom Thumb, Jewel Osco, Shaw’s and many more recognizable names.

Albertsons Companies recently rolled out our Presence with a Purpose work model. Placing a premium on adaptability, safety and family well-being, Presence with a Purpose will help us build a hybrid work environment between remote work and office time. A one-size-fits-all approach does not apply to everyone, and teams are allowed to make decisions that are best for them.

What you will be doing

Albertsons’ Technology and Engineering organization is looking for a Lead Technology Product Owner to join our Supply Chain and Manufacturing – Technology and Engineering team. At Albertsons, we believe building an amazing customer experience is rooted in a deep understanding of modern software practices and developers who are building the world’s most amazing applications. As a Lead Technology Product Owner of DevOps Supply Chain, you will be responsible for full lifecycle product management.

We are looking for a dynamic leader who has a good balance of technical skills, keen product sense, and an understanding of how technology teams deliver incredible products for their customers. You will be a key member of the DevOps Supply Chain team, leading the delivery of new capabilities that enable our business partners enable state of the art enterprise Supply Chain & Manufacturing solutions.

As the Lead Technology Product Owner, you will own the strategy, define product features, drive the system architecture, and spearhead the best practices that enable a quality product. This is a dynamic role for someone who is a strategic thinker who can turn planning into great product experiences. The Product Owner (PO) is responsible for delivering on the end-to-end product vision. He will be the main interface with the Application Teams within the Supply Chain & Manufacturing Portfolio organization. Additional characteristics of the role:

• Highly visible role requiring the ability to work closely with application teams, infrastructure, data architects, vendors, and internal management to drive effective product delivery and evolution.
• Responsible for enabling the smooth delivery of products and platforms throughout the delivery lifecycle removing impediments and blockers slowing down the flow of delivery.
• Owns product vision and internal customer satisfaction; The PO is responsible for Product Strategy, investment management, multi-year planning and market/product analysis.
• Plays important role in developing a collaborative, innovative culture with the other Product Manager and development teams.
• The Product Owner has direct accountability for Product backlog prioritization, delivery management, lifecycle management, operational reliability, and financial budgeting cost optimizations as well as overall customer satisfaction.

Our ideal candidate will have a strong technical / operations foundation, be an effective manager and an inspiring leader. We are looking for someone who is a self-starter with strong communication, leadership and organizational skills.

The position will be based in Pleasanton, California or Plano, Texas.

Main responsibilities

• Continuously improves product offerings through a deep understanding of business needs and a close collaborative environment with our technical teams:
  • Launches product features aligned to internal customer journeys, both from a discovery of their needs to deployment and utilization
  • Engages with key stakeholders in identifying requirements, defining product features, and working closely with development teams to get those features in the hands of the customers.
  • Builds and leverages relationships across Supply Chain portfolio to deliver innovative products and features.
  • Acts as the primary point of contact for all aspects of the Product, Roadmap and Lifecycle – Acts as the voice of the customer (VOC); Is the final authority on product requirements.
  • Identifies market need, interfacing with internal customers as needed to define the scope and position of the product; oversees competitive research and technology assessments.
  • Works with Business Leadership to drive awareness and adoption of the Product.
• Creates and maintains the product roadmap, strategy, inclusive of cost, investment and overall benefit realization.
  • Provides strategic leadership to the team by creating the overall strategic vision for the product.
  • Defines, represents and communicates product strategy that is in-line with business long-term goals and objectives; delivers unique value.
  • Delivers business impact through a variety of metrics, including product adoption, expansion, conversion and usage.
• Provides cross-functional leadership and bridges organization gaps between different functional groups.

The salary range is $133,600 to $178,200 annually. Starting salary will vary based on criteria such as location, experience, and qualifications. There may be flexibility for exceptional candidates.

A copy of the full job description can be made available to you.

What we are searching for

• A visionary – you see things not just as they are, but as they could be.
• A problem-solver – you find ways to get things done.
• A collaborator and relationship builder- you can be effective in matrixed organizations by building great relationships.
• Passionate with efficiency and productivity - because there is always room for continuous improvement.
• Entrepreneurial spirit with a track record for delivery results in a fast-paced environment
• Proficient knowledge of product management techniques (product roadmap development, feature team planning, agile methodology), web services, online technologies and user interface design
• Proven ability to develop and nurture a product strategy – with direct experience in strategic planning, product management practices, and organizational, operational and/or technical change; Possess and up-to-date knowledge of technology standards, industry trends and emerging technology and innovation.
• Knowledge and experience with Cloud technologies (Azure, Google, Vendor SaaS implementation) and integrations.
• 3+ years of Product Management experience and leading cross-functional software projects
• 3+ years of experience with Azure/Google/SaaS technology software and working with application lifecycle management tools, and popular product management frameworks and tools.
• 3+ years of years of Supply Chain end-to-end experience.
• Knowledge and experience in developer tools, operational tools, and/or application management tools, including monitoring tools, build, continuous delivery (CI/CD), infrastructure as code, tools.
• An understanding of DevOps with an understanding of how modern software is built, packaged, and deployed.
• Knowledge of Agile fundamentals, theory, and practical experience from a product management/product owner perspective.
• Demonstrated ability to drive requirement definition and solution design sessions, working closely with stakeholders across the entire organization and with developers.
• Capability of identifying business impacts, recommend best-practices and/or alternate approaches, and provide timeline estimates.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to represent the team in open forums, to peers, and with senior executives.
• Proven customer skills, including the ability to discover the true requirements underlying customers’ feature requests to identify the most important problems we could solve for.
• Strong customer service skills and ability to follow through to resolve customer issues.
• Ability to share knowledge and collaborate with application portfolio owners.
• Strong experience in leading discovery and initiation phase for large scale projects
• Understanding of Investment decisioning process, business case development, cost and recovery models
• Strong interpersonal skills
• Team player but has the ability to lead projects independently with little guidance.
• Excellent analytical/problem-solving skills, including data analysis.
• Ability to collaborate with senior leaders across application portfolio and gain alignment on groundbreaking initiatives.
• Demonstrated ability to work through ambiguity to detailed solutions.
• Excellent leadership, partnership and collaboration skills.
• Expert understanding of business value drivers with some understanding of the broader business context
• Strong understanding of investment decisioning process, business case development, cost and recovery models
• End-to-end product lifecycle management - strong experience in product management focused on technology products is an advantage.
• Experience in scaling a diverse, dynamic and fast-growing technology team.
• Experience in leadership and/or management, ideally in a Retail organization
• Proven experience of building strong, cohesive partnerships with internal technology customer
• Strong ability for delivering operational excellence.
• Exceptional at prioritizing and focusing on the highest value opportunities.
• Deep understanding on how to optimize teams to meet the ever-growing demands of a fast-paced environment.
• Ability to work cross-functionally with matrixed and distributed teams to deliver results.
• Executive presence and mindset, with the ability to roll up sleeves when necessary.

We believe the successful candidate has these qualifications and experience:

• Experience in working with open-source projects.
• Prior knowledge/experience with developer platforms
• Experience in working Azure, GCP, Oracle, SaaS and integrations.
• Experience in Supply Chain (product distribution and manufacturing)
• Material Handling Equipment experience is a plus
• Experience with product management tools (road mapping, mocks, wireframes, project management, Git tools, UI/UX tools)
• Experience with managing software development cycles implementing agile methodologies.
• Worked with at least 2 different medium size engineering teams.

What it is like at Albertsons?

Albertsons Culture Principles

Compassion: We always treat each other with kindness and respect

Team: We always support and recognize each other

Inclusive: We always value everyone’s perspective

Learning: We always strive to grow and develop ourselves and others

Competitive: We always act with integrity to win over the customer

Ownership: We always take actions to drive our success