OverviewREI Co-op is united around discovering, building and celebrating better ways of working in this world, all so that folks can find and pursue a love of the outdoors. When you work for the co-op, you do your best work with the support to live your best life. And you play a part in shaping the future of the outdoors, for people and our planet.
Responsibilities and QualificationsThis job contributes to REI’s success by ensuring the effective delivery of the REI Technology organization to meet business demand and by aligning the platform engineering technology practice and vision to deliver optimized business processes providing the appropriate foundation to satisfy the strategic objectives of REI.
The Director of Engineering Enablement maintains, develops, supports, and optimizes key functional areas including platform engineering tooling & methods, platform and digital pipeline services, Site Reliability Engineering, public cloud SaaS/PaaS services and API engineering practice. Key aspects of the role include evaluating new and emerging core platform engineering technologies and services and identifying opportunities for increased operational efficiencies and technology opportunities in the organization. Models and acts in accordance with REI’s guiding values and mission.
Leading the Way (team leadership, coaching and development responsibilities for this “manager of staff”)
- Identifies and communicates key responsibilities and practices to ensure the organization promotes a successful attitude, confidence in leadership, and teamwork to achieve business results.
- Supports the implementation of company programs, procedures, methods and practices to promote REI key messages.
- Challenges and inspires employees to achieve business results.
- Ensures employees adhere to legal and operational compliance requirements.
- Oversees training and development of employees directly and indirectly managed and makes effective staffing recommendations.
- Conducts and ensures the completion of performance reviews.
- Provides coaching, direction and leadership support to employees in order to achieve department, company and customer results.
- Establishes and maintains visibility within the department.
- Monitors operational statistics, reports trends, variances and issues, and takes appropriate action.
Your Planning & Navigating Requirements (the plans the job is responsible for creating and executing, and how the job ensures they are implemented)
- Develops and updates multi-year plans for leveraging appropriate systems and resource strategies, (e.g. SaaS, IaaS, Paas, DaaS, in-house resourcing, and commercially-available-off-the-shelf products)
- Champions the consolidation of systems and solutions with overlapping functionality & capabilities.
- Evaluates and implements delivery models that provide efficient and effective technology platform engineering responsibilities
- Oversees Technology operational governance for all application systems, platform engineering, and Technology support services, to include, but not be limited to, disaster recovery and business continuity planning, documentation, and readiness execution.
- Ensure the technology solutions well-being of the organization by adhering to established strategies and technology and architectural standards.
- Develop, track and control, the Cloud, Developer Platform and Site Reliability Engineering services annual operating and capital budget
- Work with customers to ensure that services and service levels are aligned to business needs.
- Deliver against service level agreements or service level objectives
- Identify and report on service quality & efficiency measures and initiate activities to pro-actively improve service quality and efficiency
- Lead architecture and capacity planning disciplines to ensure that Platform Engineering services maintains capability and capacity to meet short-, medium- and long-term business demand
- Informally and formally benchmark technology platform engineering services against industry standards in support of REI goals and objectives, including best practices for cloud engineering, use of infrastructure as code, and modern developer experience tools
- Proactively address problems and incidents and ensure proper communication and escalation procedures are in place in support of end customers.
- Develops and maintains key performance indicators for the platform engineering systems including internal and external service levels.
- Ensures that business systems, interfaces and processes are supported and operational 24x7x365; that application systems are maintained, documented, and kept current; that development environments are maintained, refreshed, documented and usage is scheduled for maximum utilization.
- Assist with the architecture planning and deployment of platform engineering security measures.
- Ensure technology systems and software operation adheres to applicable laws and regulations.
- Manage and set priorities for the architecture, design, maintenance, development, and evaluation of all platform engineering systems.
- Oversees purchasing of cloud services, platform tools, system software, and systems management.
- Directs services for 24 X 7 platform engineering services and environments. Ensures SLAs are met and operational metrics are tracked and reported.
- Directs services for the architecture, engineering, configuration and support of platform engineering services, including developer platforms, pipeline tooling, source code repository, cloud engineering, observability and application performance management systems.
- Oversees management and negotiation of contracts for platform engineering services, pipeline tools and software.
- Leads cross-division collaboration to ensure coordination and integration of business needs and solutions.
- Conducts effective negotiations with technology vendors and ensures contractual performance standards are met or exceeded.
- Develops professional relationships with internal and external peers, fostering these relationships through industry associations and providing education on how best to use division services to satisfy Company needs.
- Ensures that division programs, policies and procedures meet regulatory requirements and industry best practices.
- Works with all Technology and Purchasing teams to ensure we have a robust Vendor Management and Negotiation Strategy.
Required Skills & Experience
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science or business administration, or equivalent training and experience.
- 10+ years of progressive information technology management and leadership experience with technology platform engineering domain expertise.
- 10+ years information technology experience, including technology acquisition, applications development, infrastructure support, logistics and operations.
- Practical understanding and experience with Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and Information Technology Services Management (ITSM)
- Experience leading technology capital projects for large multi-unit organizations
- Knowledge of retail, manufacturing and logistics and distribution processes preferred.
- Insight and experience planning and delivering systems in the competitive marketplace.
- Ability to develop department-level strategic plans, business plans and annual budgets.
- Ability to lead and direct highly-technical work teams to achieve superior performance
- Ability to negotiate contracts and agreements with information technology product and service vendors and providers.
- Excellent understanding of release and change management techniques and methods
- Builds capacity of individuals and teams through effective employee development, involvement, communication, and supervision efforts.
- Creates a strong, mutually supportive work spirit and culture where people can do their best.
- Establishes trust and inspires others.
- Makes effective organization and people decisions in a manner consistent with REI's values and ethics.
- Delivers on commitments and holds others to same.
- Champions the organization and advocates solutions in the overall Company's best interest.
- Uses business knowledge, innovative thinking, and sound judgment in the solution of problems or the pursuit of business opportunities.
- Consolidates information from various sources including feedback from others to reach sound decisions.
ClosingAt REI, we believe the outdoors is for all. We are committed to becoming a fully inclusive, anti-racist, multicultural organization. We know that there's strength in our diversity – that each employee brings unique skills, experiences, and perspectives. Every day you are driving change, fostering a culture of respect, and knowing you're backed by benefits that support your whole life. To work towards this commitment and fulfill our brand promise of inspiring and enabling a life outside for everyone, we seek employees who demonstrate different ways of working, create a sense of belonging, and actively listen and learn.
Pay Transparency
We are committed to practices that promote pay equity and transparency. As required by applicable Pay Transparency laws, REI provides a range of compensation for roles that may be hired in locations under these requirements. Factors that may be used to determine your actual salary may include a wide array of factors, including: your specific skills and experience, geographic location or other relevant factors.
REI offers all regular employees a generous employee discount, access to health benefits, a retirement savings plan and accrued time off. Click here for a detailed overview of benefits plans by employee profile.
Pay Range$158,100.00 - $269,000.00 per year
