Sally Beauty

Job Description

Innovation Manager

This position is hybrid working 3 Days a week in the Support Center located in the Legacy West/Plano area.

About Sally Beauty Holdings, Inc.

At SBH, our purpose is to inspire a more colorful, confident, and welcoming world. We are the leader in professional hair color, selling and distributing professional beauty supplies across 11 countries through our Sally Beauty and Beauty Systems Group businesses. Sally Beauty offers products for hair color, hair care, nails, and skin care to retail customers looking for salon quality products at a value price. Beauty Systems Group, branded as Cosmo Prof or Armstrong McCall stores, along with its direct sales consultants, sell professionally branded products intended for use and resale by salons to retail consumers.

About the role

The Enterprise Innovation Manager - Data & Business Intelligence, is instrumental in taking new ideas in the data and artificial intelligence (AI) landscape and cultivating them into positive business outcomes. This role helps create a culture of innovation by shaping the processes needed for forward movement across the enterprise. The ideal candidate should have strong business knowledge in a retail environment working across multiple business models (B2B, B2C, E-commerce, and brick & mortar). The candidate should have a solid background in Data and Business Intelligence space – data engineering, data reporting, analytics and data governance. Experience in project delivery, from idea formulation through final project delivery, is also desired. The Innovation Manager will work across IT and business units to formulate ideas and deliver impactful Data & AI projects.

Responsibilities

50%: Project Discovery

• Shepherd Leadership, SMEs, and business stakeholders in identifying business needs and developing problem statements, business rules, and metrics for strategic Data & AI initiatives.
• Define and manage the overall scope of an initiative and gain appropriate signoff from affected stakeholders.
• Lead the definition of high-level requirements and work across IT and vendor partners to develop timelines and cost estimates for projects.
• Assist leadership with building business cases and preparing for funding approvals and various stage-gating processes.
• Ensure all aspects of delivery and solutioning are accounted for prior to project execution by ensuring requirements are met throughout the project lifecycle process and keeping stakeholders apprised of changes to scope.

40%: Project Delivery

• Play an active role during the project delivery cycle, which may involve direct project/program management or oversight.
• Manage budget-versus-actuals, timelines, and resource planning for assigned projects.
• Oversee the development of AI/ML models, data pipelines, and scalable data architectures, collaborating with data scientists, engineers, and product managers.

10%: Create partnerships with Key Leaders and stakeholders throughout the enterprise (e.g., Digital, Solutions Delivery, Infrastructure & Ops) to identify SME’s and customers (Digital, Finance, Solution Delivery, Infrastructure & Ops leaders).

Knowledge, skills & abilities requirements

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Data Science, Computer Science, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of experience, education, and training.
• Experience with a modern data stack including Databricks, Power BI, Azure Data Factory, and data governance frameworks.
• 8+ years of experience in a combination of data engineering, data reporting, advanced analytics, and project management.
• A proven track record of managing complex data and AI programs across multiple business units.
• Skilled at creating executive-level presentations and summaries based on complex data insights.
• Experience with development and execution of use cases, business benefit capture, and realization.
• Demonstrated experience with Data projects life cycle processes and delivery.
• Experience in gaining group consensus and prioritization.
• Demonstrated knowledge and experience in applying data and AI to business areas within a retail environment.

Competencies & attributes

• Aptitude for Innovation: Keeps up with industry trends and knowledge in the Data & AI landscape.
• Shows a Bias for Action: Proactively researches and solves issues using data-driven insights.
• Excellent Relationship-Building: Builds strong relationships across IT and business units and manages internal politics and buy-in.
• Strategic Focus: Operates strategically with the ability to dive into details when necessary.
• Embraces Ambiguity: Works with a brief list of assumptions and supports Sponsors to drive initiatives.
• Curious and Persistent: Willingness to take the first steps to inspire others and deep dive into new data domains.
• Optimistic and Insightful: Strategically minded and curious about how new data systems, processes, and customer behaviors can be leveraged.
• Strong Technical Aptitude: Possesses a solid understanding of data and AI technologies to guide and assess technical initiatives.

Working conditions & physical requirements

This will be a hybrid role required to be onsite at the Corporate office on specified days. The work environment generally involves everyday risks or discomforts which require normal safety precautions typical of such places as offices, meeting and training rooms, retail stores, and residences or commercial vehicles, e.g., use of safe work practices with office equipment, avoidance of trips and falls, observance of fire regulations and traffic signals, etc. The work area is adequately lighted, heated, and ventilated.

The work is sedentary; however, occasional travel to company locations may be required. Typically, the employee may sit comfortably to do the work. However, there may be some walking; standing; bending; carrying of light items such as papers, files, books, small parts; using a keyboard, driving an automobile, etc. No special physical demands are required to perform the work.

#LI-Hybrid