Lead Enterprise Architect - Product-to-Market

About The Role

You’re the architecture point of contact for Product-to-Market — the entire pipeline from consumer insights and line planning through sourcing, manufacturing, inventory, pricing, and store delivery. That’s not an org chart line on a slide. That’s the revenue engine of four global brands:
Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Athleta.

You will own the architecture decisions that determine whether these brands can move faster, source smarter, price dynamically, and get product to the right place at the right time. You’re accountable for translating what the business needs into technology choices that actually work — and for killing the ones that don’t.

This is a hands‑on architecture role inside a transformation. Not a governance seat. Not an advisory board. You are in the work.

• Lead product selection and vendor evaluation—rationalizing a complex landscape of legacy and SaaS platforms across PLM, sourcing, inventory management, merchandising, pricing, and franchise. Run the methodology, facilitate cross‑functional evaluation teams, build scorecards, present trade‑off analyses, and drive decisions. Build vs. buy is a conversation you have weekly, not annually.
• Own the end‑to‑end solution architecture for your P2M domains—consumer insights, assortment/line planning, digital collaboration (merchants—designers—vendors), product design, MFP/buy planning, costing, sourcing, PO tracking, inventory visibility, replenishment, pricing optimization, and store planning. Design the target state, sequence the migration, and hold engineering accountable to the architecture.
• Drive AI and automation adoption where it actually creates value—AI‑driven inventory forecasting, attribute‑based buy models, dynamic pricing, size localization, speed‑to‑market acceleration. Identify high‑value use cases, ensure responsible and compliant implementation, and execute in alignment with our enterprise AI strategy and Office of AI direction.
• Integrate across the enterprise—domains don’t exist in isolation. Inventory visibility feeds eCommerce. Pricing engines drive promotions across channels. Sourcing data flows through supply chain. Design integration patterns that make systems work cohesively, not just coexist.
• Create architecture artifacts that drive decisions—CDDs, SDDs, impact assessments, vendor analyses, technology roadmaps. Documents that move $50M+ investment decisions through our stage‑gate process.
• Govern without being the governance police—participate in design reviews, approvals, standards discussions, and technology evaluations. Posture is enablement, not gatekeeping. Make teams faster by giving them clarity, not slower by giving them process.
• Mentor and build capability—surrounded by engineers, product managers, and junior architects. Share what you know and build the architectural maturity of the teams around you.

• You’ve been in the trenches of a real technology transformation—an actual business and technology transformation where legacy systems were replaced, processes redesigned, and organizational resistance overcome.
• You know P2M and retail operations—PLM, merchandising, sourcing, inventory management, pricing, and supply chain adjacency. You’ve architected in these domains and understand where technology truly matters.
• You can hold your own in a room with business leaders, data scientists, and engineering leadership—adjusting communication for each audience without losing substance. Translate architecture into business impact and business requirements into architecture decisions.
• You’ve led vendor evaluations with real stakes—multi‑vendor, multi‑million‑dollar platform decisions where you owned the recommendation and stood behind it.
• You’re comfortable with conflict—vendors push back, engineering teams resist change, product managers demand rapid delivery. You navigate hard conversations without avoidance.
• You’ve managed offshore teams and MSPs—knowing the difference between effective delegation and throwing work over the wall.
• You’re current on AI/ML, composable architecture, and the modern SaaS landscape—evaluating, selecting, and implementing these technologies in production.
• Reta…