Sr. Associate Product Management - Ecommerce

The Opportunity:

American Girl is looking for a Sr. Associate Product Manager for our Ecommerce site. Role is responsible for defining, designing and driving the development and management of the features and functionality of our Digital experiences for American Girl ecommerce and digital experiences. This extremely unique and cross-functional position achieves results through facilitation and collaboration with key stakeholders from across the business and information technology teams. This role will be primarily focused on small and medium complexity projects but will also provide input and support on strategic initiatives and more complex projects. This role will determine digital needs, develop and prioritize initiatives, ensure alignment with cross-functional budgets and resources, and act as a key stakeholder on various digital initiatives to ensure delivery. This role will work with the Sr Manager and other cross functional leaders to develop the strategic ecommerce roadmap. This role is a subject matter expert for the program portfolio and drives the long-term roadmap prioritization and alignment across all business units. The key outcome is to build the best possible experience for the American Girl customer.

What Your Impact Will Be:

Identifies Roadmap and Key Deliverables: Creates a cross-functional product management plan based on industry best practices, key project deliverables and identification of key metrics. Understands how our customers use digital and how changes to channel experiences can have positive or negative impacts on customer buying behavior. Analyzes customer needs, competitive offerings and provides direction on best practices and emerging trends in relation to ecommerce capabilities. Develops understanding of project deliverables and provides insight to best meet goals.

Creates and owns the business cases for digital initiatives and drive for approval of financial leadership and other technical and non-technical stakeholders. Collaborates with other team members to manage project interdependencies. Leads the prioritization of digital features and understands the art of sequencing their delivery with an agile framework. Provides clear digital requirements and business rules to guide the development of new features and define acceptance criteria of those features. Demonstrates ability to simplifies complex design requirements into component parts and systematically evaluates them. Coordinates with IT Program and Project Mgmt. teams to ensure digital channel enhancements are implemented per specifications within budget and on schedule. Develops and socializes a project plan, including key milestones and timing.

Manages Projects: Monitors the project from initiation through delivery by directing schedules and project deliverables, making thoughtful, but quick decisions, and organizing interdepartmental activities to ensure completion of the project on-schedule and within constraints. Exercises business planning and management skills to provide insight into the development of project plans. Maintains and updates project plans with clear breakdown by area of accountability. Schedules, manages, and participates in cross-functional meetings with the ability to influence and finalize decisions through the execution of the plan. Identifies, develops and manage contractual relationships with strategic partners and providers. Oversees and drives project communication touch points. Revises project plans to meet changing needs and requirements as the project progresses. Recommends alternate paths/plans as the need arises to meet project goals/timeline.

The Sr. Associate supports all Ecommerce tasks and work with IT for prioritization and Status sheets. The roles will function as a project and product manager. In addition, they will support strategy and execution for the overall site, while also documenting all priorities, removing bottlenecks. They will also be responsible for identifying test plans and working with Target to execute tests.

Leads communication touch points: Leads internal project reviews to report status, issues and risks. Organizes formal project reviews as needed. Partners with all consumer and business insight teams to measure and report on business results. Holds meetings with all internal customers, addresses issues with resolution, and documents all key discussion points and outcomes. Reviews and assesses the health of projects to identify potential issues and gaps that need to be addressed. Documents and escalates any changes in scope and/or risks.

What We're Looking For:

• Extensive (3+ years) experience in ecommerce, innovation, production management, technology strategy and/or software development.
• Demonstrates a high level of competence and passion for digital technology and a comprehensive understanding of usability. Needs to understand the digital best practices as well as practical solutions to problems.
• Proven experience developing and managing a product roadmap fro digital channel initiatives. Documented track record of navigating organizations and leveraging internal partners to create or co-create innovative, customer-focused solutions from concept through launch.
• Experience distilling business/consumer requirements/needs impacting concept development, representing the voice of the consumer throughout the product development process.
• Highly analytical thinker with experience in both quantitative and qualitative testing methods. Skilled in developing business cases and quantifying the cost/benefit of user experience enhancement projection a digital environment.
• Innovative and forward-thinking with the ability to quickly identify potential solutions. Ability to proactively and effectively communicate technical vision and key milestones to varying audiences and at all levels of an organization. Strong facilitation and influence skills as well as the ability to build strong partnerships. Must be able to work successfully across multiple business functions.
• Strong critical thinking skills. Must be a good problem solver committed to driving results and multiple concurrent projects to success. Positive, resilient, with an ongoing commitment to achieving high quality results.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.