Director, IT

About OTB Group

OTB is an international fashion group comprising the iconic, unconventional brands Diesel, Jil Sander, Maison Margiela, Marni and Viktor&Rolf. It also controls the Staff International and Brave Kid companies and holds a stake in American brand Amiri. OTB – short for "Only The Brave" – believes in the possibility of pushing beyond the frontiers of fashion and style to support the creativity of international talents and express in full the innovative spirit and uncompromising courage of its founder and chairman, Renzo Rosso. With more than 6,000 employees worldwide, the Group is founded on a digital approach centred on the consumer, a concrete long-term commitment to the creation of a sustainable, technologically driven business, and close attention to social issues through the OTB Foundation.

 

Overview:

The IT Director is responsible for the overall planning, organizing, and execution of IT infrastructure and support functions for OTB North America. This includes directing all IT infrastructure and support operations to meet company and internal client requirements as well as the support and maintenance of existing infrastructure and the development of new technical solutions.  The IT Director will own all aspects of Digital solutions including being an advocate for IT solutions, partnering to deliver roadmaps for the future, building new capabilities, and ensuring existing solutions have robust lifecycle management plans. This role will partner with global IT teams, Business clients, and vendor/partners to be successful. The applicant will lead internal and partner teams to build, enhance, and deliver these business capabilities.

 

Responsibilities:

• Ensure global brand strategy is effectively delivered.
• Responsible for overseeing all the IT activities required to successfully open new stores (e.g. planning IT Needs with construction team, IT Hardware provisioning and configurations, POS setup and test, user training etc…)
• Act as the main contact point with the 1st Level Retail Support Outsourcer to review KPI and SLA and continuously improve the service level.
• Responsible for overseeing all the internal second level support activity for all the issues related to IT Applications and Infrastructure in all the stores and in the Head Office.
• Responsible for Coordinating third party for Onsite activities (e.g. Onsite Support, Onsite Installation etc.)
• Responsible for overseeing all IT infrastructure (network and systems), operations, projects, and ongoing user support.
• Organization development and management, budget management, people development and management.
• Global organization alignment.
• Analyzes complex business needs presented by the user community and/or clients and recommends technical solutions.
• Ensures the consistency and maintainability of existing infrastructure by creating, maintaining, and enforcing standards/procedures for implementing technical solutions.
• Keeps abreast of new technology relevant to the company's security and infrastructure.
• Responds to the needs of a 24/7 operation, as needed.
• Directs and prioritizes the workload of IT Infrastructure and support teams.
• Participates in all hardware and software evaluations and maintains vendor contracts.

 

Qualifications:

The ideal candidate will be a service-oriented, self-starting, proactive, highly responsible, and organized go-getter with an enthusiastic attitude.         

• 10+ years of relevant experience in global retail.
• Deep understanding of the fashion apparel industry and operation.
• Experience with global scale IT infrastructure project management.
• Strong collaboration and cross-functional communication skills.
• Strong tech