The Technical Project Manager is responsible for leading projects that apply new or existing technologies and solutions to solve business needs. They will work with the IT and business management teams to define overall technical direction. In addition, they will partner with the business to determine system needs, while influencing and guiding the change process from concept to implementation. They will also coordinate the efforts of internal and external staff, and of key business partners in the support of existing production systems and in the execution of new system projects. Lastly, serves as a functional and/or technical expert in one or more disciplines.

RESPONSIBILITIES:
Leading the activities of providing new capabilities and driving value from existing capabilities.
Managing projects throughout the entire systems development life cycle, ensuring that requirements are defined accurately, systems are designed/coded or purchased that meet the defined requirements and that execute efficiently. Creating detailed project plans, coordinates team resources and manages to overall project time line. Ensuring that test plans and training plans are designed and executed successfully, all required system and user documentation is created accurately, projects are completed on time and under budget and anticipated business benefits are achieved.

Supporting existing production systems, coordinating related support and enhancement activities. Defining and prioritizing problems and requests. Ensure proper testing and business change management practices and procedures are followed. Ensuring all support activities are executed on time and on budget.
Takes a leadership role in analysing the use of new and existing technology to meet current and future business needs. Investigates new tools, applications, and technologies and determines how these can be used to solve business problems. Understands business trends and the need for competitive advantage.
Recommends, designs, and oversees development of application solutions. Works with senior members of the IT organization to create and enforce architectural standards. Ensures the architectural integrity within the enterprise. Technical resource across multiple platforms and systems.

Provides technical training to programmers and programmer analysts on the use of new technologies. Provides working prototypes and development environments for other programmers to experiment with. Works with other leads on large projects, either as a lead or a team member. Expected to perform business design and analysis, internal consulting, application testing, and application design reviews.

QUALIFICATIONS AND SPECIAL SKILLS REQUIRED:

Required Skills and Qualifications
At least 5 to 10 years experience supporting retail systems. Solid understanding of retail dynamics especially in planning and allocations space.
Experience implementing and/or supporting packaged solutions in a complex, highly integrated environment.
Bachelor's degree or equivalent work experience in information systems, computer science, or a related technical discipline.
Technical orientation balanced by project management discipline. Able to supervise internal programmers, analysts, consultants, non-technical business resources and external vendor resources.
Demonstrated track record managing technical application projects.
Experience in risk identification and management
Experience working for a national retailer with multiple stores
A solid understanding of industry best practices in retail; specific demonstrated experience mapping business processes and comparing those processes to industry best practices
Demonstrated ability to manage staff remotely, across multiple time zones
Strong analytical, problem solving, and debugging skills.
Demonstrated ability to execute basic financial analysis, such as ROI.
Ability to effectively communicate at all levels of the organization.
Some travel may be required

Preferred Skills and Qualifications
Working experience with Cognos, JDA applications suite, Microstrategy, Retek application suite, PeopleSoft application suite, Oracle, Manugistics and the NSB application suite.
Experience with the Microsoft Office Suite especially PowerPoint, Excel, Microsoft Project and Visio
Experience with (Sun Solaris) UNIX and Windows operating systems
Experience with relational databases - specifically Oracle, SQL Server and Access
Experience with computer languages such as C, Visual Basic, PL/SQL and JAVA
Data Warehousing experience
Some Management Consulting experience
Graduate degree

SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES:
Supports management in the recruitment, retention, and career development of internal staff
Managing, mentoring, and leading internal and external staff as defined in project structures.