Technical Product Owner (Category Management)

At Hallmark our Information Technology (IT) division is vital to helping Hallmark win in the marketplace. We play a leadership role in identifying, developing, and managing technology and process solutions. We pro-actively partner with business areas to develop new capabilities, build reliable solutions, and efficiently manage the corporation's investment in technology and end-to-end processes. The Global team in Hallmark Technology supports our core Global business with Technology solutions to drive efficiency and ease of use for our business partners. This organization is responsible for identifying and delivering technology strategies and solutions that advance consumer and retail priorities for Hallmark Gold Crown & mass channel retail, Hallmark Digital, and Supply Chain. We are a fast paced, agile team with a great team culture! We play a key role in managing an effective relationship between IT and our Global business partners, as well as helping advance the development and implementation of a multi-year technology roadmap.

Hallmark's Information Technology team is seeking an experienced to support our Blue Yonder category management technology platform. In this role, you will be a critical decision-maker responsible for translating business priorities into product requirements and best practice category management solutions. You will lead the work to deliver new capabilities and optimize our category management process, serving as subject matter expert working collaboratively with external technology partners and internal agile teams to deliver best-in-class solutions within the Blue Yonder Category Management platform. The role of a Technical Product Owner exists to bridge the gap between technology and Hallmark's business objectives. They serve as a crucial link, translating business requirements into technical specifications and ensuring alignment between development teams and stakeholders. By understanding both the business needs and technical possibilities, they streamline communication, prioritize tasks, and guide the development process, ultimately ensuring that the delivered product aligns with Hallmark's goals and meets customer needs effectively.

Major responsibilities include:

• Create and communicate a clear product vision and roadmap that aligns with the business goals.
• Optimize and change processes to achieve business objectives.
• Use data and metrics to justify requirements, build business cases, and measure performance.
• Manage an improvement backlog.
• Gather requirements, provide updates, and ensure alignment on priorities and expectations.
• Act as a liaison between business stakeholders and technical teams to clarify requirements, provide guidance to clarify product goals.
• Overseeing the system development process, participating in sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives.
• Create definitions for desired system enhancements or improvements.
• Partner with other product teams and suppliers to define/validate end-to-end technology integrations.
• Serve as a subject-matter-expert in SCPO system knowledge.
• Manage software vendors to deliver against service level agreements (SLAs) and deliver new capabilities.
• Orchestrate and provide frontline support for new site implementations, major rollouts, etc.
• Lead and execute testing phases for system implementations.

This role serves as the point of contact for advanced escalation of issues. It includes:

• Liaison with the vendor for complex matters or root cause determination.
• Problem solving for matters beyond typical RUN matters which may lead to a change in standards.
• Business escalation - understanding business impact.
• Operational escalation - outage & problem management.

• Experience working with category management software.
• Bachelor's degree or 4 years professional work experience.
• Experience in technology systems administration, software development, or technical role.
• Knowledge of software development processes, backlog management, and requirements translation.
• Experience with collaboration and discovery and stakeholder alignment across cross-functional teams.

• Experience in Blue Yonder Category Management suite of applications (Floor Planning, Space Planning, Assortment Optimization, Planogram Generator, and Category Knowledge Base.
• 2+ years of experience in Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, etc.) and tools (ADO, Jira, Trello, etc.) to manage projects effectively.
• Preferred candidates would have Blue Yonder SCPO Functional Accreditation.
• Deep understanding of data relationships to enable System-to-System performance and accuracy.
• Familiarity with application testing, debugging and analysis of issues.
• Strong technical acumen and familiarity with software development processes, programming languages, data analytics, or other technical domains relevant to the product are highly desirable.
• Strong technical skills to interpret and analysis data using SQL.
• Preferred candidates would have experience working with big data volumes.
• Proven background in collaboration and creative problem solving to deliver upon business objectives.
• Exceptional leadership abilities, effective communication, and the capacity to influence and align stakeholders are crucial for success.
• The ability to motivate teams and foster collaboration across departments is highly preferred.
• Ability to manage competing priorities and a high volume of initiatives at one time.
• Proactively prioritize the work and manage expectations.
• Curious and self-starter.
• Customer focused mentality.

• This position is hybrid with onsite requirements to be a couple days each quarter (min)/month (max).

You must show how you meet the basic qualifications in a resume or document you upload, or by completing the work experience and education application fields. Accepted file types are DOCX and PDF.

In compliance with the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, Hallmark Cards, Inc. and its subsidiary companies will hire only individuals lawfully authorized to work in the United States. Hallmark does not generally provide sponsorship for employment.

Employment by Hallmark is contingent upon the signing of the Employment Agreement, signing of an agreement to arbitrate in connection with the Hallmark Dispute Resolution Program, completing Form I-9 Employment Eligibility Verification, passing the urinalysis drug screen, education verification and satisfactory reference and background checks.

Hallmark is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, pregnancy, national origin, physical or mental disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, or any other legally-protected status. Principals only please.

For more than a century, Hallmark has been bringing people together and improving the relationships that matter most. That's why millions of people all over the world connect with the Hallmark brand. It has always been a mission so much bigger than any one of us who work here.

Today, we need empathetic learners, strategic thinkers, and enthusiastic visionaries with diverse experiences and skills to help us create the rest of Hallmark's second century as we shift to a more digitally savvy, unified approach that combines the best of brick-and-mortar retail with the efficiency of dot-com spaces. Help us imagine what our next hundred years could look like!

When you join Hallmark, we will go out of our way to make you feel like part of the team. In the day-to-day, we'll make the best use of the skills and talents you already have. We'll also give you leadership opportunities and show you multiple potential pathways to future success.

Our culture of care for our consumers and for one another shows in the way we embrace different backgrounds, identities, and working styles, deliberately seeking out ways to be more inclusive both internally among our work groups and externally through the things we make and sell to our retail partners and consumers. We believe that a broadly inclusive, equitable approach is also our best path to future success. We're seeking out those who can bring a fresh perspective to our business and would love your input as someone new to our team! We can only change and grow when we intentionally include new perspectives-like yours.

Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities

The contractor will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by the employer, or (c) consistent with the contractor's legal duty to furnish information. 41 CFR 60-1.35(c)