Manager - Merchandising Platform and Operations at Costco in Issaquah, WA

Costco IT is responsible for the technical future of Costco Wholesale, the third largest retailer in the world with wholesale operations in fourteen countries. Despite our size and explosive international expansion, we continue to provide a family, employee centric atmosphere in which our employees thrive and succeed.

This is an environment unlike anything in the high-tech world and the secret of Costco’s success is its culture. The value Costco puts on its employees is well documented in articles from a variety of publishers including Bloomberg and Forbes. Our employees and our members come FIRST. Costco is well known for its generosity and community service and has won many awards for its philanthropy. The company joins with its employees to take an active role in volunteering by sponsoring many opportunities to help others.

Come join the Costco Wholesale IT family. Costco IT is a dynamic, fast-paced environment, working through exciting transformation efforts. We are building the next generation retail environment where you will be surrounded by dedicated and highly professional employees.

As a member of the IT Management Team, you are responsible for managing, developing, and leading a team of employees. Your role includes leading the specific functional responsibilities of your team, which involves overseeing team performance and deliverables. However, your role as a leader within our organization requires more than the management of resources and day-to-day operations. As a steward of the company, you are charged with the development and execution of your team’s strategic vision and plan and ensuring that your team’s actions align with the larger goals of the company and the IT Division.

The Merchandising Platform and Operations Manager position, is a highly visible role. This manager will build strong relationships within Merchandising, Cloud Tech, Infrastructure Services and Security to help enable the growth and maturity of Merchandising operations. The role will manage a team responsible for incident response, system stability, optimization, execution, and performance. The successful candidate will demonstrate strong technical aptitude in DevOps practices, Cloud Infrastructure (Azure/GCP/IBM) and Platform Engineering, Monitoring and Alerting, and have a demonstrated ability to lead teams that operate in an ambiguous, fast-paced environment yet deliver against aggressive deadlines.

This area is responsible for monitoring, supporting and maintaining the overall Merchandising cloud and on-prem ecosystems, focusing on the health and operation of Infrastructure areas, Platforms, and DevOps processes in the non-production and production environments. This area is also responsible for ensuring security and compliance of the Merchandising Platforms with Merchandising established standards and Architecture governance, as well as with Costco policies, regulations and industry frameworks. This is a highly collaborative team within Merchandising, as well as with other areas of IT, to ensure minimal disruption to our members and our business. This team is responsible for developing operational standards, training, monitoring and support strategies for the Merchandising Platform ecosystem.

As the primary conduit between your employees and upper leadership, your role in communicating and modeling the values and guiding principles of our company culture is of vital importance. All members of IT Management should strive to consciously and consistently foster a culture of engagement, trust, and “open door” communication.

If you want to be a part of one of the worldwide BEST companies “to work for”, simply apply and let your career be reimagined.

ROLE

● INTEGRITY: When achieving benchmarks and goals, use methods/strategies that are consistent with the Code of Ethics and the Standard of Ethics for Managers and Supervisors. Always leads by example. Appropriately handles employee concerns and follows through to resolution.

● MEMBER SERVICE: Provides and ensures staff provides an exceptional member experience.

● ADMINISTRATION: Ensures proper department coverage (writing schedule and break aids if needed). Understands department budget, able to research and explain budget variances.

● MANAGING PERFORMANCE: Coaches and mentors employees to provide support and guidance. Has regular open and honest conversations with employees to discuss work performance and career development. Identifies learning opportunities to strengthen employee knowledge, skill and ability.

● COMMUNICATION: Regularly shares information with employees and colleagues via meetings and one-on-one conversations. Successfully navigates difficult conversations with employees, members, and suppliers. Listens, expresses empathy and adapts to get points across. Addresses issues immediately to ensure a timely resolution and to avoid escalating the situation. Consistently demonstrates business knowledge during interactions with senior management.

● SELF-MANAGEMENT: Demonstrates sound judgment, taking a partner when necessary. Ability to maintain self-control in the face of hostility or provocation or in intense, hectic situations.

● INCLUSION: Encourages different approaches and ideas to work and to accomplish goals. Seeks employee input. Takes the time to get to know or reach out to candidates who show potential that may not come forward on their own.

● COMPLIANCE AND SAFETY: Takes measures to ensure employee and member information is kept confidential and adheres to IS security policy.

● Reviews applicant submissions for job postings, conducts interviews, and makes recommendations regarding hiring status.

● Responds to employee concerns using problem-solving skills, tact, and discretion in accordance with the Costco Employee Agreement and other applicable regulations.

● Develops and maintains positive working relationships with business customers - demonstrating value through consistent and repeatable delivery of services and recommendations.

● Manages all aspects of vendor relationships and holds vendors accountable to established SLAs and Costco standards.

● Leads a team that is able to balance a strategic approach to Costco’s Merchandising business needs with IT initiatives through prioritization and resource allocation.

● Maintains current knowledge of industry trends and standards.

● Executes against approved projects and meets dates in support of scheduled application releases.

● Achieves progress against goals and metrics.

● Applies new Operating Model principles to Agile organization.

● Captures and prioritizes backlog of technical debt resulting from program integration activities.

● Identifies, communicates, and manages dependencies that support successful delivery of Merchandising application environments.

● This is a full-time management/leadership position (45+ hours per week).

Required:

● 5+ years’ in a senior technical lead role.

● 3+ years’ technical management experience.

● 3+ years’ experience managing production environments either as a manager or lead/individual performer.

● 2+ years’ experience with DevOps implementation, security, governance, and best practices.

● Azure applications, services, and infrastructure environment knowledge and experience.

● Demonstrate strong technical aptitude in DevOps practices, Cloud Infrastructure (Azure/GCP/IBM) and Platform Engineering, Monitoring and Alerting.

● Demonstrated ability to lead teams that operate in an ambiguous, fast-paced environment, yet deliver against aggressive deadlines.

● Demonstrates strong collaboration skills to advance cross-functional projects, resourcing needs, and resolution to issues; ability to operate with a high sense of urgency.

● Hands on experience with monitoring tools, such as Dynatrace or Azure Monitor.

● Familiarity with cloud architecture, services, and design concepts.

● Strong leadership and team-building skills; ability to focus various work streams at the same time.

● Detail oriented and thorough, with ability to think “big picture” and understand the key trends and goals that drive Costco’s Merchandising business; strong problem solving skills.

● Innovative, creative, and possesses a passion for excellence.

● Strong interpersonal skills; able to manage people at varying skill levels and work with people at all management levels.

● Strong communication skills, both oral and written.

● Excellent organizational and planning skills, with experience building strategic and tactical plans.

● Able to support off-hours work as required; including weekends, holidays, and 24/7 on call responsibilities on a rotational basis.

● HIPAA Training and Supervisors Orientation (within 30 days of hire); Leadership Development 101 (within one year); Costco Pay Policies (within 90 days of promotion).

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off, health benefits - medical/dental/vision/hearing aid/pharmacy/behavioral health/employee assistance, health care reimbursement account, dependent care assistance plan, short-term disability and long-term disability insurance, AD&D insurance, life insurance, 401(k), stock purchase plan to eligible employees.

Costco is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. Costco is an equal opportunity employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or any other legally protected status. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request to IT-Recruiting@costco.com

If hired, you will be required to provide proof of authorization to work in the United States. Applicants and employees for this position will not be sponsored for work authorization, including, but not limited to H1-B visas.

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