Director, Digital Experience Platforms

Role Summary

The Director, Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) is accountable for the strategy, engineering delivery, operations, reliability, and evolution of all customer-facing digital experience platforms across Empire banners. This role leads the technology execution of web, mobile, content, search, UX platform capabilities, and front-end engineering ecosystems, ensuring seamless, scalable, secure, and high-performing customer experiences.

The Director serves as the primary technology counterpart to Digital Experience, Digital Product, Customer Engagement, Commerce, and Banner teams, translating business vision into enterprise-grade digital capabilities. The role is responsible for balancing innovation, delivery velocity, operational excellence, and platform sustainability while enabling a product-led operating model.

Accountabilities & Responsibilities

Digital Experience Platform Leadership

• Own the end-to-end technology strategy, roadmap, delivery, and operation of all digital experience platforms across web, mobile, and customer-facing digital channels.
• Define the future-state architecture and capability evolution roadmap for DXP technologies including Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), front-end platforms, mobile applications, search technologies, design systems, and supporting digital services.
• Ensure platform capabilities support enterprise digital commerce objectives, customer experience strategies, and banner-specific priorities.
• Establish technology standards, engineering practices, and governance frameworks for front-end and customer experience platforms.

Engineering Delivery & Execution

• Lead multiple engineering teams responsible for:
  • Customer websites
  • Mobile applications
  • Front-end engineering
  • Search and discovery platforms
  • Design systems
  • Content delivery platforms
  • AEM ecosystem
• Drive delivery of strategic initiatives through Agile product teams.
• Ensure predictable execution, release readiness, and high-quality software delivery.
• Partner with Product and Business teams to define roadmaps, priorities, and release strategies.
• Govern delivery performance, release quality, technical debt management, and modernization initiatives.

Digital Experience Reliability & Operations

• Own availability, performance, scalability, and resilience of all digital experience platforms.
• Establish operational excellence standards for:
  • Incident management
  • Production support
  • Monitoring and observability
  • Disaster recovery
  • Capacity planning
• Lead major incident response and continuous service improvement initiatives.
• Ensure regulatory, privacy, accessibility, and security compliance requirements are embedded within platform delivery.

UX Technology & Experience Enablement

• Own the technology ecosystem that enables experience delivery, including:
  • Design systems
  • Component libraries
  • Content management capabilities
  • Front-end frameworks
• Partner with UX and CX teams to ensure customer experience strategies are translated into scalable technology solutions.
• Build strong alignment between design intent and engineering execution.
• Enable consistency across banners while balancing local business needs.

Platform Modernization & Innovation

• Champion modern engineering practices including:
  • Headless architecture
  • API-first development
  • Component-driven development
  • DevOps and CI/CD
  • Cloud-native architecture
• Evaluate emerging technologies and industry trends to continuously improve customer experiences.
• Drive platform simplification and technology rationalization to reduce complexity and improve speed-to-market.

Leadership Responsibilities

• Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing team of managers, architects, Analysts and Developers.
• Foster a culture of accountability, innovation, customer obsession, and operational excellence.
• Build succession plans and talent development strategies for key digital capabilities.
• Establish clear ownership and measurable outcomes across engineering and platform teams.
• Create an environment focused on collaboration, continuous improvement, and execution excellence.

Qualifications

Education

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or related discipline.
• Master's degree considered an asset.

Experience

• 12+ years of progressive experience leading large-scale digital engineering organizations.
• Proven experience managing customer-facing digital platforms at enterprise scale.
• Experience leading large Agile product and engineering teams.
• Strong background in digital commerce, customer experience, or omnichannel retail environments.

Technical Expertise

• Adobe Experience Manager (AEM)
• Headless and composable architectures
• React / Next.js ecosystems
• Mobile application platforms (iOS and Android)
• API and microservices architecture
• Search and discovery technologies
• Cloud platforms (Azure preferred)
• DevOps and CI/CD practices
• UX design systems and front-end architectures

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