About the role:

The Group Director of Technical Program Management will oversee and implement strategic programs across the enterprise, ensuring they align with business objectives and providing clear solutions. This position demands deep technical knowledge and cross-functional leadership to mentor teams, manage complex projects, and influence stakeholders, all while utilizing industry best practices and emerging technologies. The Group Director delivers critical business insights through analytics, ensures goals and execution are aligned across functions, and propels strategic partnerships and initiatives. In this role, you will collaborate with the EVP of Global Tech Platforms, handling a variety of tasks that allow the EVP to concentrate on central leadership responsibilities within the business and the broader Global Tech Organization.

What you will do:

Program Planning & Development: 

• Define a program implementation strategy that impacts an entire domain across the enterprise. 

• Secure commitment across the enterprise. 

• Identify and address cross-pillar gaps (e.g., dependencies, performance). 

• Drive clarity in a program on business/technology solutions/problem statements and build consensus with stakeholders, leaders, and executives. 

• Define frameworks and guidelines to identify synergies, overlap, and waste across the enterprise. 

• Proactively scout the market to identify best practices to improve ways of working. 

Technical Expertise: 

• Advises and brokers agreement on end-to-end, high-level system/solution design of complex systems through an understanding of end-to-end systems. 

• Invents, evolves, simplifies, and improves overall initiatives by leveraging knowledge of technical systems. 

• Validates and provides solutions to complex problems by conducting impact analysis. 

• Proactively checks for design flaws that may lead to outages and recommends alternatives to prevent impacts to customer experiences and business continuity. 

• Identifies gaps/opportunities within or between services, tools, and workflows across the architectural landscape and recommends solutions. 

• Establishes new/innovative processes or approaches to manage delivery plans, thoroughly informed and accounting for decoupling but gaining alignment between applications* infrastructure** and security to ensure quality outcomes for new initiatives and the modernization^ of existing technology stacks. 

• Analyzes the short- and long-term impacts of end-to-end architecture on initiatives and on adjacent areas/domains and recommends solutions. 

• With an enterprise-wide view, establishes frameworks and methodologies to translate end outcomes into system/platform/security-level elements across multiple engineering components/teams to arrive at business goals. 

• Develops teams, tools, and methods to transform the operations and effectiveness of teams within a domain and the broader organization. 

• Establishes frameworks/methods to influence and/or drive technical decisions across initiatives. 

• Understands and validates customer requirements and architectural requirements relevant for all products within a domain in line with customer expectations. 

Leveraging Domain Knowledge: 

• Demonstrates knowledge of market segments and technology trends and develops domain strategies with executive leadership to define the future state of a domain​.  

• Proactively collaborates with business stakeholders and product and engineering teams to identify areas for the implementation of new processes, automation techniques, and updated ways of working. 

• Leads futuristic conversations based on strong market research and technical judgment on the current domain ecosystem. 

• Serves as an advisor and partners with stakeholders as a solution design lead for automation for domain-specific clients.  

• Assesses and researches the market to selectively adopt technologies and gains leadership sponsorship to drive innovation in the program.  

Deliver Program & Results: 

• Define performance objectives and metrics for tracking the completion status of programs across domains or the enterprise. 

• Monitor the industry for new approaches, benchmark industry best practices, and adjust approaches in response to new risks and changing business needs. 

• Escalate issues to relevant stakeholders to unblock teams and drive programs. 

• Improve the resource efficiency of existing budget inputs and ensure that resource efficiency is a key feature of new and existing programs. 

• Design and run programs that turn down non-value-added work and reallocate resources to higher-value efforts. 

• Define, own, and drive very complex, large-scale strategic programs/portfolios and execute lifecycles. 

• Oversee the development of project management methodologies, toolkits, and practices and provide guidance and coaching. 

• Propose solutions to unlock the highest value of programs despite setbacks. 

• Build and lead a high-performing team while managing cross-functional projects involving sales, partner management, operations, product, engineering, business operations, and finance teams to solve complex business problems at scale. 

• Proactively initiate and drive cross-functional projects and processes, prioritize tasks, and demonstrate leadership and influence across product areas to achieve strategic goals. 

• If my response does not answer your question, please let me know. 

• Ingrain data-driven decision-making into ways of working for an organization. 

Influential Communication for Alignment: 

• Communicate and unify team members around a vision and execute the mission and plans. 

• Set near- and medium-term goals and align team members to goals/tradeoffs. 

• Scout the industry for business communication styles/techniques and facilitate training of team members. 

• Connect strategic business priorities, leveraging data and analytics, financial acumen, and problem-solving techniques to build a cohesive narrative. 

• Modify ways of working, define the framework around sharing and receiving feedback, and guide the implementation of best practices based on industry trends. 

• Present to executive leadership/diverse, organization-wide audiences, positioning arguments/data with well-structured stories. 

• Establish communication frameworks to converge multiple streams of work for diverse teams. 

• Develop artifacts that influence decisions and drive change. 

Analytical Problem Solving: 

• Develops metrics taxonomy to derive insights from multiple sources and lead discussions. 

• Utilizes advanced analysis to predict and explain long-term trends and/or the implications of alternatives. 

• Leads complex problem-solving efforts with a broad and deep understanding of both internal and external environments. 

• Identifies leading fact-finding techniques, judgment, and cascades, leading through data to reach common understanding and shared commitment on agreed-upon actions. 

• Question assumptions to clarify articulation of the problem and coach team members. 

• Mentor team members on fact-finding techniques, diagnostic tools, and judgment to identify and break down business problems. 

Program Stakeholder Management: 

• Define stakeholder engagement frameworks, including typical priorities. 

• Review engagement of stakeholders through the course of the program in problem solving, areas of risk, review requirements and coach others on engaging effectively. 

• Strategically influence stakeholder alignment through changing program scopes, timelines, and deliverables. 

• Strategically influence stakeholders to connect and align seemingly unrelated approaches/divergent perspectives to arrive at common solutions for the end deliverables of a program in complex situations. 

• Proactively manage stakeholders through customized techniques applicable to the audiences across levels. 

• Influence decisions and outcomes related to the end result of the program. 

• Enable trust amongst teams (engineering, product, architects) to execute program deliverables with minimum friction. 

• Drive consensus and alignment toward unified solutions during ambiguous situations with diverging approaches. 

Portfolio Management: 

• Define and align portfolio strategy with the organization's overall business objectives and technology roadmap. 

• Prioritize projects based on strategic value, risk, and resource availability. 

• Coordinate and allocate resources across multiple projects to optimize performance and ensure efficient use of personnel, budget, and technology. 

• Track team productivity within Global Tech Platforms (methodology, plan-vs-actual, cap-rates, etc.). 

• Vendor Relationships- Track spend and other analytics related to vendor relationships 

• Regularly assess team capacity and make adjustments to resource allocation to meet changing project demands. 

• Manage the financial aspects of the portfolio, including budgeting, forecasting, and financial reporting. 

• Identify opportunities for cost savings and ensure projects are delivered within budget. 

• Proactively identify potential risks and issues that could impact portfolio performance. Develop and implement strategies to mitigate identified risks. 

• Monitor the progress of projects within the portfolio, ensuring they are on track to meet deadlines, budget, and quality standards. 

• Define and track key performance indicators (KPIs) to assess the health and success of the portfolio. 

Leadership Expectations: 

• Live our Values: Models the Walmart values to foster our culture; holds oneself and others accountable; and supports Walmart's commitment to communities, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability; maintains and promotes the highest standards of integrity, ethics, and compliance. 

• Servant Leadership: Acts as an altruistic servant leader and is consistently humble, self-aware, honest, and transparent. 

• Embrace Change: Demonstrates curiosity and a growth mindset; fosters an environment that supports learning, innovation, and intelligent risk-taking; and exhibits resilience in the face of setbacks. 

• Digital Transformation & Change: Drives continuous improvements, supervises the adoption of new technology, and supports digital disruption in line with Walmart's business model. 

• Deliver for the Customer: Delivers expected business results while putting the customer first. 

What you will bring:

Program Planning & Development: 

• Program management techniques, tools, and frameworks 

• Benefits analysis 

• Program planning tools and techniques 

• Communication tools and processes 

Technical Expertise: 

• Techniques to translate requirements for software, hardware assets, or platform capabilities 

• System/platform design concepts/components and architecture 

• Emerging tools and technologies 

• Product/Feature Technical Design 

• Services, APIs, and technologies within assigned teams/areas 

• Software, platforms, and/or Information security standards and guidelines 

• Infrastructure components, cloud, data, and development platforms 

• Hardware/software lifecycles (EOL, upgrades, migrations) 

• Site Reliability Engineering concepts (observability, monitoring, pre-production checklists, incident management) 

• Cloud computing technologies 

• Service management concepts (ITIL framework) 

Leveraging Domain Knowledge: 

• Essential aspects of a specific business/domain area 

• Industry trends, market segments, and competitor activities 

• Domain-related terms and success metrics relevant to program context 

Deliver Program & Results: 

• Risk management methodologies 

• Project management tools, techniques, and methodologies 

• Project tracking tools, dashboards, and reports 

• Financial management tools and processes 

• Budgeting and internal and external programs 

• Change management 

• Critical paths 

• Negotiation methodologies 

Influential Communication for Alignment: 

• Application and allocation of business communication styles/techniques 

• Communication channels/mediums 

• Program management documents 

• Qualitative and quantitative data management 

Analytical Problem Solving: 

• Data analysis and research 

• Problem-solving techniques and frameworks 

• Data-driven and fact-based decision-making techniques/methodologies 

• Impact analysis and course correction techniques/methodologies 

• Precedence and use cases for business problems 

• Barriers to effective problem-solving 

Program Stakeholder Management: 

• Stakeholder identification and engagement 

• Processes and ways of working across various groups 

• Relationship management techniques 

• Techniques to manage conflicting stakeholder priorities and ambiguity 

• Stakeholder management strategy 

Portfolio Management: 

• Strategic and Financial Acumen 

• Resource and Risk Management 

• Performance and Stakeholder Management 

• Governance and Compliance 

• Leadership and Team Development 

• Execution and Delivery Excellence