Vice President - Product Management, Research & Experience Design

Overview

Foot Locker is a store-led, multi-brand and international retailer operating across Foot Locker, Kids Foot Locker and Champs Sports. The Vice President leads product management, user research and experience design across the full Foot Locker landscape, spanning customer-facing, associate-facing and business-operational capabilities. This leader connects technology investment to measurable business results while helping business partners identify where technology can create new value.

As part of the DICK’S Sporting Goods family, you’re backed by the resources, reach, and career opportunities of a world-class sports company. That unleashes Foot Locker to keep pushing forward with the agility and edge that define the brand. We’re looking for great people who want to influence culture and the generation that is shaping what’s next. Whether you’re building strategy, shaping innovations, or creating unforgettable customer moments, you’ll contribute to decisions and experiences that define our brands’ impact in the communities we serve.

This hybrid position will be located at our New York office.

Expectations for hybrid in-office schedule is three days a week, typically Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

NYC - Foot Locker Office

2 Pennsylvania Plaza

New York, NY 10121

The breadth of the role is in strategy, alignment and value across the business, rather than requiring craft depth in every discipline. Engineering owns delivery throughput and production reliability. This role is accountable for curating the right portfolio with Business and Engineering, shaping and validating solutions, driving adoption with business sponsors, and demonstrating whether investments produced the intended value.

AI is changing how people interact with retail. Customers and associates are moving from navigating screens to expressing intent through conversation, images and voice, and increasingly through AI agents that search, compare and buy on their behalf. Designing Foot Locker's experiences for that world is at the core of this role.

At the same time, Foot Locker Technology is moving toward an AI-enabled software delivery model over the next two years while advancing integration with DICK'S Sporting Goods. In close partnership with DICK'S, the Vice President will lead the product dimension of this transformation at Foot Locker: determining how ideas are selected, how solutions are shaped and validated, and how impact is demonstrated. The function will move beyond defining requirements to rapidly creating, testing and iterating solutions.

What Success Looks Like in 18 to 24 Months

• AI-native customer and associate experiences. Customers and associates accomplish tasks by expressing intent through conversational, visual and agent-driven experiences. Research identifies where AI interactions add value, and Foot Locker becomes discoverable and trusted by the AI agents customers use. Journeys spanning digital and store channels remain connected, while associate tools measurably improve service and store operations.
• Product operating model transitioned. Product management, research and design work in step with the AI-enabled software delivery model. Working prototypes validate ideas with stakeholders before engineering commits, and the time from idea to validated decision is measurably shorter.
• Impact intelligence built into how the organization works. Product, engineering and business teams use evidence of impact to decide what to build, adjust, scale or stop, and to anticipate where future value lies. Impact Ops provides the mechanisms, including a named business sponsor for every funded initiative, and a value network links technology investment to business outcomes. Business partners regularly take up opportunities that Product and Technology bring forward.
• Availability promise kept across channels. Inventory accuracy, order management and fulfillment capabilities support a customer promise of availability that holds in stores and online. Modernized operational and merchandising capabilities give merchants, planners, allocators, supply chain teams and store leaders product-managed tools that measurably improve the speed and quality of decisions and operations.
• A team built for the new model. The right leaders are in place, reskilling has happened where it is viable, and material capability gaps have been filled.
• Balanced portfolio health and business value. Product leadership balances new value creation with the operational health of existing products, prioritizing reliability, support, technical debt and modernization, particularly in operationally intensive portfolios such as Supply Chain, so teams can deliver business value faster and more sustainably

Responsibilities

Lead Experience Design for AI-Enabled Interaction

The Vice President sets the experience vision, strategic direction and expected outcomes; the design and research leader provides deep functional expertise in AI-enabled interaction and leads execution through the design and research organization.

• Define how customers and associates will interact with Foot Locker as they move from navigating screens to expressing intent through conversation, images, voice and agents, and set the design vision and operating model for it.
• Design for two kinds of users: people, and the AI agents that search, compare and buy for them. Make Foot Locker products, availability and services legible and trustworthy to both.
• Design AI behavior and trust: what agents may do on their own, how they explain themselves, when they hand off to a person, and how users stay in control.
• Give associates, as first-class users, AI assistance with stock, customer context and next best actions at the moment of service.
• Lead service design for journeys that cross digital and store, including discover, reserve, visit, pick up and return, so they hold together across handoffs.
• Partner with Creative Services and Brand Management to create a cohesive experience that reflects Foot Locker's brand strategy and creative expression.
• Build and scale a shared design system that supports adaptive, AI-generated interfaces and preserves each brand's identity.

Lead User Research

• Build and scale a continuous research practice, including customer interviews, store ethnography, associate shadowing and usability testing, that feeds problem selection and Impact Likelihood Assessments.
• Study how customers and associates use AI assistants and agents, and how expectations differ across brands, markets and communities.
• Pair research before launch with Impact Ops after launch, so the organization learns in a closed loop.

Lead the Product Operating Model Transition

• Define how product management, research and design work in an AI-enabled delivery model, in partnership with Engineering and the Technology leadership team. Prove changes in selected teams, then scale what works.
• Redefine how problems are selected, specifications are developed and validated, and product quality is evaluated within the AI-enabled delivery model.
• Use AI-generated working prototypes, led by design, so customers, associates and stakeholders can experience solutions before specifications are finalized.

Curate Strategy and Alignment Across the Foot Locker Landscape

• Curate an aligned strategy and roadmap with leaders across customer, associate, store, merchandising, supply chain, marketing, brands and international business. Connect customer and associate needs through the operational value chain to measurable business results while preserving clear accountability for domain-level decisions.
• Bring business leaders ideas for where technology can create value, drawing on research, operational data, impact results and AI capabilities, and develop the strongest together.
• Maintain the idea scoring framework and Impact Likelihood Assessment with business leaders and Engineering.
• Ensure every funded initiative has a named business sponsor, with a hypothesis, success threshold and stop criteria agreed jointly, and stop work together when it is not meeting them.
• Hold business sponsors accountable for adoption: value comes from the change in how people work and customers experience Foot Locker, not from launch alone.
• Design the loyalty, personalization and promotional experience, including how AI personalizes offers and how customers understand and control the data and preferences used to personalize their experience.
• Own the product agenda across the full Foot Locker landscape, including store systems and operations, merchandising, planning and allocation, supply chain, inventory, order management, fulfillment, digital commerce and international business capabilities.
• Partner with Customer Care on agent assist, self-service and returns so service quality and cost to serve improve together.

Build Impact Intelligence Across the Organization

• Build Impact Ops: agree with business leaders what counts as impact, how it is baselined and which sponsor owns each metric; set instrumentation standards from launch; and run a regular review cadence and Business Impact Retrospectives, with Analytics measuring and Finance validating.
• Build impact literacy so evidence shapes everyday decisions across Product, Engineering and the business.
• Use accumulated evidence to sharpen future Impact Likelihood Assessments, moving from reporting what happened toward anticipating where value will come from.
• Maintain the value network, including core technology investment, and report what did not work too.

Partner on Integration with DICK'S Sporting Goods

• Partner closely with DICK'S Sporting Goods teams to integrate teams, platforms and processes as scope and timing are defined. Shape integration decisions, adopt shared platforms and standards where they benefit both businesses, and balance integration commitments with Foot Locker's strategic priorities.

Build and Develop the Team

• Assess the existing organization early; clarify leadership roles and capability needs; reskill team members where aptitude exists; hire where gaps are material; and evolve the structure, talent and agile ways of working as the operating model matures.

Qualifications

Required

• Strong retail operating and business-domain understanding: a deep, practical understanding of how stores, merchandising, planning and allocation, inventory, order management, fulfillment, distribution, logistics, customer care, loyalty and digital commerce operate. This weighs heavily in the search.
• Executive leadership experience in Product Management, business strategy, retail operations or technology, with accountability for enterprise-scale strategy, roadmaps, adoption and measurable business outcomes. A pure Product background is not required; candidates may bring deep technical or business leadership experience when paired with demonstrated retail business-domain understanding.
• Demonstrated ability to lead Product Management, User Research and Experience Design as integrated capabilities, covering customer, associate and business-operational audiences and multimillion-dollar portfolios, while raising Design and Research influence on decisions.
• Demonstrated experience leading a change in how an agile product or technology organization operates, including clear evidence of what changed and how the new model was adopted.
• Demonstrated experience measuring and attributing the business impact of technology investments, including when controlled experiments are not feasible, in partnership with Finance and Data Analytics.
• An informed point of view on how interaction changes when AI mediates it, hands-on familiarity with AI prototyping, and a record of hiring and empowering strong Product, Design and Research leaders.
• Demonstrated success identifying and advancing initiatives with business partners that created measurable value.
• Demonstrated ability to balance new value creation with reliability, support, modernization and technical debt.
• Bachelor's degree in Business, Computer Science, Engineering, Marketing or a related field.

Preferred

• Multi-brand, multi-region or international leadership.
• Experience leading Product Management, User Research, Experience Design, business strategy, retail operations or technology in a complex retail environment.
• MBA or other relevant advanced degree.
• Experience leading through acquisitions or major platform and operating-model integrations.

At Foot Locker, we value innovation, authenticity, and integrity in all that we do.  To uphold the security and fairness of our hiring process, we ask that candidates refrain from using AI tools, including ChatGPT, during interviews and assessments.  To ensure a smooth and secure experience, please review the following guidelines:

• Cameras must be on for all virtual interviews.
• AI tools are strictly prohibited during interviews or assessments.

We appreciate your understanding and cooperation as we work together to create a transparent and equitable hiring experience.

Benefits

The annual base salary range is $330k to $400k. This range represents the anticipated low and high end of the salary for this position. This role is also eligible to receive short term incentives that align with individual and company performance. Salary will be determined by the education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities of the applicant, internal equity, and alignment with market data. Salary is one component of the Foot Locker, Inc. total compensation package, which includes the following. 

Foot Locker Benefits:

• Employee Discount 
• Paid Time Off 
• Medical | Dental | Vision Coverage 
• 401(k) | Roth 401(k) 
• Life Insurance 
• Flexible Spending Account 
• Opportunities for Advancement 
• Tuition Reimbursement for Qualified Courses 
• Strong Company Culture 
• Employee Resource Groups