Senior Information Technology Project Manager

The Team:

Whole Foods Market Retail Technology Delivery and Release team (POS, Payments, and Checkout Technology) is looking for a passionate and innovative Sr Techno/Functional Project Manager to join the family in Austin TX. This team leads, plans, and coordinates all aspects of complex highly distributed software/product feature implementations, upgrades, and other system-specific projects from initiation to delivery. Projects involve leading Cross-functional project teams such as business stakeholders, software engineering, testing, security, and cloud/AWS.

The Role:

You will define project requirements and perform feasibility and needs/impact assessments. You develop detailed agile-based project plans and lead software development, testing, release, implementation and ongoing maintenance efforts of projects. This includes team member allocation, progress tracking, monitoring change control process, testing, documentation, project updates, training, and on-time delivery of projects within budget constraints.

Who you are:

You will bring a functional and technical background delivering distributed projects that impact Point of Sale, Payments, Retail Checkout and other retail technology across multiple domains (On-Prem and Cloud/AWS) that impact over 530 locations across 3 countries. You have 4+ yrs of leading enterprise level projects (agile/waterfall environment), are passionate about the customer, and work cross-functionally delivering to project timelines. You have a proven track record working through ambiguity and take a data-driven approach to making project decisions. You love breaking down large, complex projects into manageable pieces, developing functional specifications and translating into technical requirements, and communicating project updates to internal and external stakeholders including Sr. leadership. Your ability to assess technical issues, and influence analytical talent and leadership are essential to success in this role.

Responsibilities:

• Initiates, plans, and implements medium to large complex projects (or oversees multiple small projects) utilizing WFM’ ‘s methodologies, practices and requirements in a single technical domain.
• Plans the project in detail and works with resource managers to acquire and schedule human and technical resources.
• Tracks dependencies on partners, vendors, and other 3rd parties and effectively influences successful dependency resolution.
• Establishes project documentation library and communicates project status to leaders and stakeholders.
• Controls project quality and success by actively managing issues and the decision process, assessing risks, initiating and tracking change requests, meeting schedule and deadlines for deliverables.
• Organizes, attends, participates in, and facilitates meetings and ceremonies with Team Members, partners, and senior stakeholders, and distributes minutes to all attendees where appropriate.
• Anticipates critical situations and independently drives mitigation strategies and actions.

Skills:

• Experience with advanced project task scheduling tools (MS Project).
• Advanced experience planning and managing large projects, including project recoveries.
• Strong knowledge of traditional/waterfall and agile project management principles and practices as well as project scheduling tools (e.g. JIRA, Rally)
• Advanced experience assessing and leading project risk, issue, and scope change management.
• Experience managing custom or packaged/SaaS vendor (e.g. AWS, ServiceNow) projects.
• Experience in project governance to keep multiple projects on track financially, technically, and in accordance with stakeholder deadlines.
• Challenges the status quo, champions change and influences others to change.
• Collaborates with others to achieve objectives and ensure information flow.
• Proactively dives deep into technical solution, business context, and team process as a servant leader.
• Ensures that all personal and team activities, metrics, and reports are conducted with as high transparency as possible for stakeholders, leaders, partners, and as part of a program if applicable

Education & Experience:

• BA/BS degree and 4+ years’ relevant experience OR equivalent combination of education and relevant experience. (required)
• 2+ year’s experience managing medium to large complex, multi-year projects with both a business and a deep technology focus. (required)
• 2+ years leading large project teams. (required)
• At least one industry-standard project management certification. (preferred)
• Experience with a structured project management methodology.

Why Whole Foods:

A career at Whole Foods Market is more than just the work you do- it's about your personal growth and creating meaningful change. Our purpose is to nourish people and the planet. That means improving how people eat, providing access to fresh and healthy food to people living within food deserts, and so much more. Working with us means you are making a difference within your community and beyond. We aren’t just a grocery store: we’re world-changers. And with your help, we will continue to set the standards of excellence and revolutionize the grocery industry.