Product Engineering Manager Customer Support and Returns, Ingka Group

WHO YOU ARE
WHY SHOULD YOU JOIN IKEA?


My name is Pierre and I recently joined IKEA to lead Engineering teams for several challenging and interesting areas, such as Food, Sustainability, Ikea for Business as well as Customer support and Returns (CS&R). I want to share why I joined IKEA and why I hope you want to join as well:
● Our culture and values - Humbleness and willpower / Lead by example / Different with a meaning / Constant desire to renew and improve / Togetherness and enthusiasm / Give and take responsibility / Simplicity / Cost-consciousness
● Our vision to help more of the many people to have an affordable and better everyday life at home and be more convenient to where they are? At the same time, become truly people and planet positive?
● We are inspired by our past and are confident about who we are and why we do what we do. For sure, some of our assets are forever strengths – our vision, business idea, culture and values, our unique offer and our unique ways of meeting customers.
● At the same time we need to undertake the challenge of transforming such a global iconic brand is breath taking – You can read about INGKA’s ‘10 jobs in 3 years’ https://www.ingka.com/what-we-do/ikea-retail/, all of them are underpinned by the amazing work we will do in CS&R. To manage this our CEO Jesper Brodin underlines we need to “Change everything (almost!)”. Going forward, digital will be an enabler for how we will succeed in serving our customers.
● Our DNA is ‘Testing & Learning’, marries with my belief of the power of agile product focus.
● Our strong belief that diversity in teams delivers better thought through outcomes. We have a high focus on diversity. One example of this is that we have 50% male/female managers within IKEA and the commitment is to have this in every part of the organization.
● The flexible work life balance. Our leadership has consistently ensured that my role doesn’t interfere with having a great quality of life out of work – we know when people are happy, they do their best work.
● The incredible people I have met are very humble, supportive and absolutely committed to lead home-furnishing retail into the future and create a better life for more of the many people, by putting the customer at the heart of all we do.


WHAT WOULD WE ASK FROM YOU?
● To have a relentless passion for meeting the customer promise, creating innovative products and motivating engineering teams to be outcome focused and innovate/learn to solve challenges.
● To be able to build leadership and engineering teams at pace.
● That you are passionate about our vison values - Values like togetherness, simplicity and lead by example are all a natural part of your everyday working life at IKEA. As a person you have great willpower and the ability to create enthusiasm around you, to dare challenge conventions and make mistakes.
● To have strong interdependent leadership skills, and that you are inclusive and humble.
● To Inspire your engineering leaders and teams to build the highest standard of software that builds confidence with our stakeholders, operations and customers due to its excellence in agility and resilience.
● To create a one team atmosphere between all co-workers in engineering, product, data science, business development, operations etc.
● To be resilient and empathetic in the face of the challenge of doing heart surgery on the the meeting with our customers through our CSC solutions – transforming our current landscape into something for the next evolution of IKEA.
● To enjoy collaborating with our CSC line operations teams and be up for finding the right agile product approach for a specific challenge.
● To enjoy building your teams with a DevOps mentality to develop new, scalable, enterprise technology, able to run our global operations 24/7.
● To bring your whole self to work and have fun building a better everyday life for the many.


WHAT YOU'LL BE DOING DAY TO DAY
As Head of Engineering for CS&R reporting to me, you will have the exciting challenge to:
● Be part of and lead one of the largest transformations IKEA is going through, the CSC transformation.
● Build and run the technology that underpins our global customer meeting:
o Innovating and creating the best solutions to serve our co-workers and customers with their digital journey.
● Create a new IKEA, by building the capability to drive digitalization throughout our CSC sub-domain
● Unlocking our plans to:
o Build the engaging customer journey and experience for our Customers globally.
● Transform the current landscape into a modern technology stack which will:
o enable us to test and learn quickly to meet our customers’ demands &
o provide a highly available, resilient & secure service.
● Manage teams and collaborate with stakeholders in our global development hubs.


We are big believers in enabling our leaders to act with autonomy and as such you would lead on the technical decisions of how you want to build and implement your products.


The home office for this role will be Malmö, there will be travel globally to meet your stakeholders, teams and partners. We believe a healthy and flexible life balance is important, so together we will strive to create a work environment where you feel in control of your life balance, can be yourself, grow and excel in both your personal and professional life.


ABOUT THIS WORK AREA
We’re the ones who make it possible for people to have a smarter life at home and a hassle-free and rewarding shopping experience. Together we work to find new digital solutions for every business need to help make IKEA a great and efficient place to work. We like to think of ourselves as innovative and modern, and we believe that nothing would actually work without us.