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Sr Manager, Strategic Initiatives & Technology Enablement

654 Richland Hills Drive, San Antonio, TX 78245-2149 United States

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  • Corporate
  • R382545
  • Full time
  • Not Remote
  • 654 Richland Hills Drive, San Antonio, TX 78245-2149 United States

Want to help pets live their best lives?

We’re proud to be where the pets go and where the pet people go. If you want to make a real difference, create an exciting career path, feel welcome to be your whole self and nurture your wellbeing, Petco is the place for you

Our core values capture that spirit as we work to improve lives by doing what’s right for pets and people.

Pet First – Protect & Empower. All pets should Live their Best Life. We put the needs of pets and pet parents at the center of everything we do.

Foster the Fun – Connect & Bond. Our Passion for pets brings us together! We celebrate the journey of pet parenthood through district experiences, products, and services.

Let’s Go! Own & Commit. We are stronger as One Petco team. We bring our unique superpowers and champion authenticity in everyone to drive success.

Sr Manager, Strategic Initiatives & Technology Enablement

Role Overview

Petco is seeking a strategic technology leader to drive high-impact initiatives across engineering, product, and business teams. This role will lead cross-functional programs focused on improving execution, modernizing technology capabilities, and enabling scalable solutions across the enterprise. 

The ideal candidate brings a strong background in software engineering, product development, and technology leadership within retail or digital commerce environments. This role requires someone who can operate across teams, influence at all levels of the organization, and help solve complex business and technology challenges. 

A key part of this role will be helping the organization implement and scale practical AI-enabled solutions that improve customer experience, associate productivity, operational efficiency, and engineering effectiveness. 

This role will also stand up and lead the technology organization’s Centers of Excellence in Performance, AI Enablement, and Automation, and serve as a trusted strategic partner to the CTO and technology leadership team, running the operating rhythm, executive communications, and cross-functional priorities that keep the organization aligned and moving. 

Responsibilities

Strategic Initiatives & Delivery

  • Lead strategic technology initiatives across engineering and product teams 
  • Drive execution, prioritization, and delivery of enterprise programs 
  • Partner with engineering leaders to improve systems, processes, and delivery effectiveness 
  • Help identify and implement practical AI solutions across platforms, products, and internal workflows 
  • Support implementation of modern technologies and scalable platform capabilities 
  • Promote engineering best practices, automation, reliability, and operational excellence 
  • Collaborate with architecture teams on scalable, API-first, and cloud-based solutions 
  • Establish standards and processes that improve execution and cross-team alignment 
  • Communicate effectively with executive leadership and key stakeholders 

Centers of Excellence

  • Establish and lead Centers of Excellence in Performance, AI Enablement, and Automation, defining each CoE’s charter, operating model, governance, membership, and success metrics 
  • Performance: Set enterprise standards for site, application, and platform performance (latency, availability, scalability, and cost efficiency); drive performance testing, observability, and capacity planning practices; and lead remediation of critical bottlenecks across customer-facing and core systems 
  • AI Enablement: Build the framework for identifying, prioritizing, and scaling AI use cases; establish responsible AI guardrails, evaluation standards, and governance in partnership with Security, Legal, and Data; drive adoption of AI-assisted engineering and productivity tools and measure their impact 
  • Automation: Identify and prioritize automation opportunities across engineering (CI/CD, testing, infrastructure-as-code), IT operations, and business workflows; standardize tooling and reusable components; and track value delivered in hours saved, cost avoided, and error reduction 
  • Run the CoE community model, including intake and prioritization, playbooks and reference patterns, champion networks, training, and regular forums, and report CoE adoption and business outcomes to technology leadership 

Executive Partnership & Leadership Operations

  • Serve as a strategic thought partner to the CTO, translating technology strategy into prioritized, actionable plans and ensuring leadership attention stays on the highest-value work 
  • Own the technology leadership operating rhythm, including staff meetings, quarterly business reviews, and annual planning calendars 
  • Administer the OKR process for Directors and above across the technology organization: facilitate annual and quarterly goal setting, ensure OKRs cascade from and align to enterprise strategy pillars, run regular check-ins and scoring, and report progress and gaps to the CTO 
  • Establish and maintain a measurement framework for OKRs and strategic initiatives, defining KPIs, baselines, targets, data sources, and owners, with consistent scorecards and dashboards so outcomes are tracked objectively and compared consistently across teams 
  • Prepare executive-ready materials for SLT, board, and steering committee forums: strategy narratives, decision memos, performance updates, and investment cases 
  • Track leadership decisions, commitments, and action items through to closure, holding teams accountable for follow-through 
  • Triage inbound requests and escalations to technology leadership, prepare briefings ahead of key meetings, and represent the technology organization in cross-functional forums as needed 
  • Partner with Finance and the PMO on annual planning, budgeting, and portfolio alignment so investments map clearly to strategic pillars 
  • Maintain ongoing visibility into technology spend (opex, capex, and vendor and contract commitments) against budget; flag variances, forecast risks, and savings opportunities to the CTO in partnership with Finance 
  • Maintain an integrated view of delivery across the technology portfolio, covering milestones, dependencies, risks, and resourcing; give the CTO a regular, single source of truth on what is on track, at risk, or off track, and drive escalations to resolution 
  • Prepare content and materials for the CTO’s town halls, all-hands, and leadership staff meetings, including agendas, presentations, talking points, and pre-reads, and drive follow-up on resulting actions 
  • Lead organization-wide communications, including leadership messages and change narratives for major initiatives 
  • Surface emerging risks, cross-team friction, and organizational health signals early, and broker resolution across leaders 
  • Lead special projects and strategic analyses on behalf of technology leadership, such as operating model and org design changes, vendor evaluations, and leadership offsites 
  • Support roll out and execution of corporate people initiatives- Performance Evaluations, Partner Surveys, partner with Procurement, HR and Finance support 

Qualifications

  • 7+ years of experience in program management, product development, or technology leadership 
  • 3+ years in leadership roles 
  • Strong background in engineering, software development, and product delivery 
  • Experience in retail, eCommerce, or digital platforms 
  • Proven ability to lead complex cross-functional initiatives 
  • Strong understanding of cloud technologies, APIs, modern architecture, and scalable systems 
  • Experience implementing modern technology and AI-enabled solutions in production environments 
  • Demonstrated experience establishing and leading Centers of Excellence or communities of practice, with measurable adoption and outcomes 
  • Experience administering OKR or goal-management programs for senior leaders and building KPI and measurement frameworks that link work to business outcomes 
  • Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills 
  • Experience serving as a trusted advisor to C-suite or SVP-level executives, with sound judgment and discretion handling sensitive and confidential information 
  • Exceptional executive communication skills, with the ability to synthesize complex information into crisp narratives, decision documents, and presentations 

Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience in omnichannel retail or consumer-facing technology organizations 
  • Background in automation, platform modernization, or operational transformation 
  • Hands-on background in performance engineering, observability, or site reliability engineering (SRE) practices 
  • Background in management consulting, corporate strategy, or a senior leadership advisory role 

Why Petco

At Petco, we’re passionate about improving the lives of pets, pet parents, and our partners. This role offers the opportunity to influence enterprise-wide technology strategy and help shape how we build and deliver solutions at scale, while working directly alongside senior technology leadership. 

For a more detailed overview of Petco Total Rewards, including health and financial benefits, 401K, incentives, and PTO - see https://careers.petco.com/us/en/key-benefits

About Petco:

We’re proud to be "where the pets go" to find everything they need to live their best lives for more than 60 years – from their favorite meals and toys, to trusted supplies and expert support from people who get it, because we live it. We believe in the universal truths of pet parenthood – the boundless boops, missing slippers, late night zoomies and everything in between. And we’re here for it. Every tail wag, every vet visit, every step of the way. We are 29,000+ strong and together we nurture the pet-human bond in more than 1,500 Petco stores across the U.S., Mexico and Puerto Rico, 250+ Vetco Total Care hospitals, hundreds of preventive care clinics and eight distribution centers. In 1999, we founded Petco Love. Together, we support thousands of local animal welfare groups nationwide and have helped find homes for approximately 7 million animals through in-store adoption events.

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Our Commitment to People, Pets and Planet

We believe the passion for pets is universal. To better serve our diverse customers across our 1,500 Pet Care Centers, 250+ Vetco Total Care hospitals and 1700+ weekly Vetco vaccination clinics, we are intentional about bringing the skillsets and experiences that help us meet the needs of all pets and pet parents. From attracting bilingual talent needed to serve multicultural market segments to leveraging a variety of perspectives to help us innovate in a competitive and changing industry, we know diversity and inclusion are critical business drivers to help Petco meet the needs of all pet families.

  • Planet

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    • Reduced energy usage by more than 4 million kWh through our lighting curtailment program.
    • In 2024, our recycling initiatives diverted nearly 400 tons of plastic from landfills.

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    • Sponsored more than 150 scholarships through our Petco/Penn Foster Scholarship Program and Latinx Veterinary Medical Association.
    • Nearly 600,000 hours of training delivered to pet care center partners.
    • Over 40% of General Manager and District General Manager positions filled by internal promotions.

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    • Reunited more than 100,000 pets with their pet parents through Petco Love Lost.
    • Helped save nearly 7 million animals through adoptions in Petco pet care centers.
    • Distributed more than 3.2 million free vaccines to pets via Petco Love.
    • Invested nearly $410 million in lifesaving animal welfare work.
    • Helped more than 4,000 animal welfare partners.
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