Sr Director Merchandise Transformation

OVERVIEW

Discover greater levels of performance. With over 1,400 stores throughout the U.S. and an innovative omni-channel ecosystem, Ulta Beauty is revolutionizing the beauty retail experience. Ulta Beauty is expanding its digital capabilities, opening new stores on a continual basis and re-designing existing locations with the latest design and technological advancements for heightened guest experiences. We’re not just growing, we’re thriving through consistent innovation and a bold commitment to re-imagination.

If you want the opportunity to build something strategic, to take ownership of your career trajectory, to apply your passion to operational excellence, Ulta Beauty provides the kind of stability and support few organizations can match. So be curious. Be flexible. Be more than you thought possible. The future is yours at Ulta Beauty.

Ulta Beauty is in the midst of a significant, multi-year project that will transform and modernize the merchandising processes and technology.

The end-to-end process will encompass planning, pricing, assortments, forecasting, inventory management, and space planning.

The key goals are to (1) optimize the right product in the right place at the right time; (2) accelerate the business by standardizing and automating new systems and workflows to respond to trends more quickly; (3) embrace advanced analytics and AI to elevate decision quality and visibility across the end-to-end process.

The Sr. Director is a key leadership role within the organization. This role will report to the SVP of Merchandise Planning and Operations, and work closely with the Transformation Office and the most senior members of Ulta Beauty’s organization to lead the user-side implementations, drive desired business outcomes, and shape our future ways of working with a focus on consumer and business value.

This role will have overall accountability for the successful adoption of the multi-year project, inclusive of delivering long-term value and within budget.

• Program Delivery: efficiently leverage project resources, mitigating risk, removing obstacles, prioritizing and assigning work, and driving accountability across the project team, SMEs, and multi-functional leads.
• Strategic Transformation Road mapping: continue to define and implement the transformation roadmap, aligning business strategies (e.g., omni-channel inventory complexity) with technology capabilities.
• Stakeholder Influence: work closely with leaders across functional work streams—Merchandising, Planning, Finance, Supply Chain, Field, Omni, Technology, Transformation office, enterprise support teams, and key software and consultant partners to create and execute strategies to deliver transformational use cases aligned to value. Partner with senior management to ideate, evaluate, prioritize, and execute initiatives and work cross-functionally to gain alignment across multiple stakeholders that may have different priorities.
• Deliver Value Cases: work with Finance, Technology, and Transformation office to manage and track budget for all included programs and work streams, collaborating on business case development. Ensure funds are appropriately assigned and effectively utilized to deliver the project roadmap on time and capture value.
• Operational Efficiency: monitor end-to-end process design and deployment to achieve key goals: automation, responsiveness, accuracy, AI deployment, scalability.
• Process Communication: ensure project governance practices are followed, such as managing the project scope, delivery roadmap, change request process, funding model, reporting/communicating transparently across key stakeholders, and following a disciplined decision-making and prioritization process.
• Executive Communication: lead upward communication and materials preparation, providing transparency to key stakeholders, the Executive Leadership Team, and Board of Directors to ensure proper strategic alignment and secure support where necessary.
• Configuration & Implementation: manage user group and partner with IT to manage configuration options, testing, and managing the UAT (User Acceptance…