Director of Software Engineering - Merchandise Financial Planning

Job Description


Are you a visionary leader that coaches and empower your colleagues to deliver exceptional customer and business results? Are you passionate for the latest possibilities within Digital workplace technologies? We are currently looking for an experienced engineering leader for the role as Director of Software Engineering or as we call it; Product Area Lead Engineer, within our Domain Assortment & Product Development at H&M Group – Business Tech.


Company Description


We are on an exciting journey to meet and exceed our customers' expectations today, tomorrow and in the future. Rapid technological development and new customer behaviors are transforming the fashion retail industry. To cater the individual needs and desires of our millions of customers, Business Tech delivers technological solutions for the entire value chain for all our brands. The best ideas evolve when great minds with different perspectives get together. We’re all on the same team in a global environment and we learn from each other. There are endless opportunities to grow – your development is all up to you!
We are proud to foster a workplace free from discrimination. We strongly believe that diversity of experience, perspectives, and background will lead to a better environment for our employees and a better product for our users
About the role
As the Director of Software Engineering (PALE) in the product area Merchandise Financial Planning, you will co-lead the product area, consisting of 8 product teams (120 people), together with the Product Area Manager. Main focus for you is to be accountable for the Product Area’s technical architecture and engineering practices.
The mission of the product area is to set a data driven planning foundation for today, tomorrow and a sustainable future.
The H&M Group has set ambitious goals to secure a strong, sustainable customer offer with locally relevant prices and cash flow for future investments; to “sell more with less”. A future poof top-down planning process and secured prices strategies will be key factors in reaching these goals. The product area is responsible for develop and maintain applications to empower our colleagues reach these goals.


Responsibilities


In the Business Tech organization, you will lead this cross-functional product development area that delivers business and customer value, always with salesmanship at heart. You will collaborate with the Business Units and our brands other Product Area Managers and Product Area Lead Engineers to solve complex engineering problems and ensure an aligned technology roadmap.
Furthermore, you will:
• Enable fact-based technology discussions, to reach desired business effect/goals and architectural vision
• Be responsible for people evaluation of Engineering Competency Leads
• Own the technology lifecycle management and API catalogue in the product area including the definition, creation and maintenance of technical interfaces / APIs in the product area that are exposed by the teams in the area
• Work with enabling platform teams to secure efficient usage of common technology platforms
• Be responsible for the overall work environment for your team


Qualifications


As a Director of Software Engineering (PALE), you have a passion for tech and modern software development and engineering practices.
We think you have great leadership skills and believe in a culture of collaboration, transparency, safety, and trust. You empower others to fail, learn, and grow and celebrate success as much as failure. You are a visionary leader that coaches and empower your colleagues with the most relevant competencies so they can lead, collaborate, and deliver exceptional customer and business results. We believe that you are a curious leader focused on value creation, growth and serving customers with full ownership and accountability. You have a holistic mindset and are typically skilled in breaking down silos, enable collaboration and empower teams. We call this servant leadership.
Furthermore, we believe you are/have:
• The ability to lead an organization unit with 70-150+ employees in a matrix organization
• Experience of Digital workplace technologies
• Excellent experience within Cloud technologies in an agile environment (GCP and Azure)
• Excellent Strategic and Product technology competence
• The ability to formulate solid business cases for technology initiatives
• A deep understanding of Solution Architecture, API architecture and design and Data and Information Architecture
• The experience of having built solutions from scratch and see them to production
• Innovation expertise in the area of Retail Technology
• Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering preferably in Computer Science (or related discipline)
• 15+ years of experience building and managing development teams that design and deliver large distributed systems – preferably in agile development, object-oriented systems realm with high availability. Solid system design and architecture experience.
• 7+ years people management experience building strong teams and managing managers. A passion for people management and mentorship.
• Experience in working with machine learning and AI
• Demonstrated experience in building, delivering and operating products and services in a consumer/enterprise space.
• Exceptional project planning/execution skills including estimating, scheduling, and executing on committed schedules.
• Ability to handle multiple competing priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• Strong verbal/written communication and inter-personal skills.
Preferred qualifications
• Masters or Doctorate degree preferably in Computer Science (or related discipline)
• 7+ years of experience as a software developer with deep knowledge of programming
• 10+ years of experience as a leader of leaders
• Passion for H&M’s leadership principles