Director of IT Applications

About Us

Join us at WinCo Foods, where we're more than just a grocery retailer - we're a growing family of over 140 supermarkets in 10 states with over 22,000 employee owners. Our purpose is to make the lives of our customers and employee owners better by offering the lowest possible prices to feed their families. Currently, WinCo is the second largest Employee-Owned company in the United States. With more than 500 millionaire employee-owners in our Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). Our benefits, including top-tier medical plans and tuition support set us apart. In your role, you'll be instrumental in making a real impact in the communities we serve, embodying our purpose every day.

Overview

Job Summary

The Director of IT Applications provides strategic and operational leadership for one or more business-aligned application teams. The role is accountable for the full application lifecycle - strategy, delivery, integration, administration, production support, security, vendor management, training, and continuous improvement - across custom-developed and vendor-provided solutions. Working closely with business leaders and IT partners, the Director translates business priorities into a practical application roadmap, balances project delivery with reliable day-to-day support, and develops a high-performing team of software development, application support, business analysis, and project management professionals.

Typical Duties and Responsibilities

• Builds and maintains multi-year application roadmaps aligned with business strategy, operational priorities, risk, and available resources.
• Serves as a trusted technology partner to business leaders; clarifies needs, evaluates options, and communicates recommendations, tradeoffs, costs, and risks in business terms.
• Leads application portfolio planning, including modernization, technical debt reduction, lifecycle management, rationalization, and build-versus-buy decisions.
• Identifies opportunities to simplify processes, improve employee and customer experiences, strengthen controls, and increase the value delivered by technology investments.
• Directs the design, development, configuration, testing, implementation, integration, documentation, and enhancement of enterprise applications.
• Establishes delivery standards and governance appropriate to both custom development and configurable SaaS or cloud platforms.
• Ensures solutions are supportable, scalable, secure, resilient, and aligned with enterprise architecture, data, integration, and technology standards.
• Oversees data integrations, APIs, batch processes, reporting dependencies, and third-party interfaces across a mixed application environment.
• Maintains transparency into delivery commitments, dependencies, risks, resource constraints, and outcomes; escalates issues early and drives decisions to resolution.
• Leads a balanced portfolio of projects, enhancements, upgrades, maintenance, and support work; aligns priorities and capacity with business sponsors and IT leadership.
• Provides executive oversight for complex initiatives and ensures clear scope, ownership, milestones, financial accountability, testing, readiness, and adoption.
• Applies fit-for-purpose delivery methods, including Agile, iterative, and traditional approaches, while maintaining consistent governance and change-control discipline.
• Promotes effective organizational change, communication, training, and stakeholder engagement for new or significantly changed solutions.
• Manages strategic application vendors and service providers, including selection, contracting support, performance reviews, service levels, escalations, renewals, and value realization.
• Develops and manages operating and project budgets, licensing, resource plans, and cost-optimization opportunities for the assigned application portfolio.
• Ensures compliance with company policies and applicable requirements for cybersecurity, privacy, records retention, segregation of duties, audit, licensing, and software change management.
• Maintains appropriate business continuity, disaster recovery, and vendor contingency plans for critical applications and integrations.
• Leads, coaches, and develops a multidisciplinary team that may include managers, software developers, application administrators, business analysts, and project managers.
• Sets clear expectations, establishes priorities, delegates accountability, provides timely feedback, and evaluates individual and team performance.
• Recruits, retains and develops talent with the business knowledge, technical skills, and customer-service mindset needed for current and future priorities.
• Manages employee actions in accordance with company policy, including staffing, scheduling, development, recognition, compensation recommendations, performance improvement, and corrective action.
• Works effectively in a fast-paced environment with competing priorities and business-critical deadlines.
• Participates in major incident response and provides leadership support outside normal business hours when critical applications or operations are affected.
• Uses standard office technology and other equipment necessary to perform the essential functions of the role
• Performs other duties as assigned or needed.

Requirements

Education:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, management information systems, business, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.

Experience:

• 8 or more years of progressively responsible experience delivering and supporting business applications, including custom-developed and vendor-provided solutions.
• 4 or more years of people-management or leadership experience with teams responsible for application development, application support, business analysis, and/or project delivery.
• Demonstrated experience managing a portfolio of business-critical applications and balancing strategic initiatives, enhancements, technical maintenance, and production support.
• Experience leading complex, cross-functional technology initiatives and communicating effectively with executives, business leaders, technical teams, vendors, and end users.
• Working knowledge of application architecture, systems integration, APIs, databases, data management, cloud/SaaS delivery models, software development lifecycle practices, testing, release management, and operational support.
• Working knowledge of cybersecurity, privacy, access management, audit controls, business continuity, and risk management as they apply to enterprise applications.

Ability to:

• Enterprise perspective and business acumen
• Clear prioritization and sound decision-making under pressure
• Strong written, verbal, and executive-level communication
• Collaborative relationship building and constructive conflict management
• Ability to translate technical complexity into clear business choices
• Commitment to employee development, customer service, and continuous improvement

Preferred Education, Experience and/or Credentials:

• Experience in grocery, retail, distribution, or another high-volume, operationally complex environment.
• Proficiency with the Workday platform across implementation, configuraton, reporting, security, integrations, and business process optimization. 
• Experience across multiple Workday modules.
• Experience leading enterprise ERP, financial, human capital management, payroll, benefits, legal, risk, or accounting platforms.
• Experience with budgeting, forecasting, contracts, licensing, vendor performance, and resource planning.
• Experience supporting a mixed technology environment that may include IBM i/DB2/RPG applications, modern web technologies, relational databases, integration platforms, APIs, and cloud services.
• Knowledge of DevOps and secure software development practices, automation, observability, and continuous integration/continuous delivery concepts.
• Knowledge of ITIL practices and Agile delivery methods; relevant certification in project management, service management, business analysis, process improvement, cybersecurity, or a major enterprise application platform.
• Master's degree in a relevant field.

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature of work performed by the employees assigned to this job.  All employees must comply with Company policies and applicable laws.  The responsibilities, duties and qualifications required of personnel may vary. 

EEO/Inclusivity

As the WinCo Foods community continues to grow, our variety of perspectives and wide range of experiences are essential to our strategy and success. We are committed cultivating and celebrating an inclusive environment in which all employees are valued and respected.

Fraud alert: WinCo advises job seekers to be cautious of unsolicited job offers and to verify the authenticity of any communication claiming to be from WinCo by checking the official WinCo careers website.