General Purpose:

As a Director Data Product Ownership at adidas Digital you are responsible for the quality and strategic impact of a wide range of products within a product domain. Together with your product owners and agile teams, you work on continuously improving and evolving the product area, maximizing the value for the customer and the company.

Partnering with IT and markets to define a robust product landscape, managing capability expansion increments and leading the teams towards definition of new functionalities & best practices are a few examples of the activities that will be expected from this role. Additionally, you will be the strategic interface to various global key stakeholders, including Global Markets, Brands and Global Digital IT for the product area, driving consumer engagement and satisfaction, as well as incremental revenues out of delivering digital experiences.

Key Responsibilities - Scope: Accountable for a wide range of products (>1m € budget)

Product Strategy & Delivery:

• Be accountable for the success of the product area considering the value for the consumer and the company (ROI) using common ROI and TCO frameworks for value and cost management, and product-led success measurement framework for team health and product maturity
• Define the mid to long-term vision and roadmap of the product area considering the value for the consumer and the company as well as its role and impact on the adidas digital ecosystem
• Be accountable for product delivery in line with the roadmap and committed delivery dates
• Identify and solve dependencies within and beyond your product area to ensure efficient realization of product adoption and success

Delivery:

• Represent the business for the product area, fostering strong relationships with key stakeholders to ensure that their views and requirements are captured in the product backlogs
• Act as the ambassador for your product area, showcasing the key functionalities, managing product adoption and assuring operational excellence
• Manage relationships outside the product area efficiently to ensure that the product teams can work autonomously

Backlog Management:

• Drive the evolution of the product area backlogs in collaboration with the product owners
• Influence roadmaps and backlogs from other product areas
• Ensure backlogs account for and integrate dependencies across functional areas like privacy, security, and governance
• Provide input into Global roadmap development to maintain an end-to-end corporate view

Product Discovery & Insights:

• Be accountable for monitoring, optimization and enhancement of the configuration, features and functionalities related to the product area using data driven methods
• Ensure that objective data sources and feedback are used for the optimization of the product area
• Share product domain insights with colleagues across the company to bring partners on the innovation journey
• Write both long and short-term strategic market analysis, product analysis, playbooks, and performance reports to contextualize the product domain insights – including successes and failures

If required – Responsibilities:

People Management:

• Build the appropriate structure to be able to manage the respective organization effectively, identify and develop the future talents and create realistic succession scenarios for key positions
• Ensure appropriate leadership skills are present at every level by creating a motivational and supportive work environment in which employees are coached, trained and provided with career opportunities through development
• Continuously monitor and evaluate team workload and organizational efficiency with the support of data and team feedback and make appropriate changes in order to meet business needs
• Provide team members/direct reports with clear direction and targets that are aligned with business needs and objectives

Key Relationships:

• Global Digital Teams
• COE and Market teams
• Global IT and Global Operations
• Global Brand organizations
• Group functions
• External vendors
• External vendors

Requirements, Education & Experience:

• Master’s degree in Information Science, Statistics, IT, or Business Administration, or equivalent combination of education an experience
• Strong track record leading Digital product development in a multi-national business environment; experience in Digital and eCommerce strongly preferred
• Experience in working with stakeholders and experts at various organizational levels
• Experience in creating strong internal product narratives that include a business case to support investment
• Experience as a Product Owner in multiple product areas or domains
• 3+ years of experience in leading a team

Soft-Skills:

• Distinctive strategic mindset and ability to prioritize and delegate high numbers of tasks with varying workload and importance
• Ability to handle ambiguity and untangle complex situations into actionable activities
• High resilience and solution-oriented attitude
• Very good leadership skills
• Engaging meeting and work session facilitation skills

Hard-Skills:

• Good Analytical and Data Visualization Skills
• Ability to adapt to new technologies and tools, processes, and ambiguity
• Good understanding of value-measurement frameworks
• Good project planning and organizational skills
• In-depth knowledge of the product domain and its ecosystem
• In-depth knowledge of Agile working methods e.g. Scrum/Kanban
• Comfortable working with enterprise-level platforms and technologies
• In-depth understanding of technology and Digital capabilities
• Fluent in English both verbally and written