Director of Data and Digital

Job Title: Director of Data and Digital

Location: Buffalo Grove, IL
Work arrangement: Hybrid onsite Tuesday through Thursday
Employment Type: Full-Time

Position Overview

Client is seeking a Director of Data and Digital to lead the technology supporting its digital guest experience and enterprise data capabilities. This role oversees digital ordering channels including ecommerce, online ordering, loyalty, and mobile as well as the data engineering, analytics, and business intelligence platforms supporting enterprise decision-making.

The Director will report to the CTO and serve as a key member of the IT leadership team.

Principal Responsibilities

Digital Channels

• Lead the technology roadmap for ecommerce, online ordering, loyalty, mobile, and other guest-facing channels.
• Own integration quality across multiple platforms, including POS systems such as Toast and Revel, Paytronix loyalty, Braintree payments, and ezCater.
• Oversee the digital guest experience across high-volume, transaction-intensive channels.
• Establish roadmap priorities in partnership with Marketing, Ecommerce Operations, and Finance.
• Manage digital platform performance, reliability, integrations, and vendor delivery.

Data and Analytics

• Define and execute the enterprise data strategy, including architecture, pipelines, data modeling, BI tools, and reporting infrastructure.
• Build and manage the data platform supporting Operations, Marketing, and Finance.
• Promote data-driven decision-making throughout the organization.
• Establish internal data-governance standards.
• Manage relationships with data, analytics, and technology vendors.

Team and Leadership

• Build and manage the digital and data team, including hiring, development, performance management, and succession planning.
• Establish delivery standards, accountability structures, and an effective operating cadence.
• Manage vendor relationships, contracts, budgets, and performance.
• Communicate progress, risks, priorities, and tradeoffs to senior leadership.
• Represent the function at the executive level when the CTO is unavailable.
• Maintain momentum and deliver results in an environment with limited resources and competing priorities.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor s degree in computer science, information systems, business, or a related field preferred.
• Approximately 8 12 years of progressive technology experience, including leadership responsibility.
• Demonstrated experience leading digital product, data, analytics, or platform teams.
• Strong understanding of digital commerce platforms, ecommerce architecture, and online ordering systems.
• Working knowledge of data engineering, pipeline architecture, data modeling, analytics, and BI platform selection.
• Experience managing external development and analytics partners.
• Experience managing budgets, vendor contracts, and technology roadmaps.
• Experience leading platform migrations, digital transformations, or data-platform implementations.
• Strong written, verbal, presentation, and stakeholder-management skills.
• Ability to present and defend technical roadmaps to executive and board-level audiences.
• Ability to work effectively with both technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
• Experience with POS systems is required.

Preferred Experience

• Restaurant, retail, hospitality, ecommerce, or multi-unit consumer business experience.
• Familiarity with restaurant technology platforms, including Toast, Revel, Paytronix, Braintree, ezCater, and online ordering systems.
• Experience supporting high-volume, customer-facing digital transactions.
• Experience building or improving enterprise data and analytics capabilities.

AI Expectations

The selected candidate should be comfortable using AI tools to improve productivity and decision-making, including:

• Accelerating requirements analysis, technical specifications, and partner briefing documents.
• Analyzing conversion trends, platform errors, and customer-abandonment signals.
• Researching ecommerce strategies, analytics platforms, and digital best practices.
• Drafting executive updates, stakeholder communications, and vendor-performance summaries.
• Reviewing and summarizing code or data-pipeline deliverables from external partners.

Candidates with a strong combination of digital commerce, data strategy, team leadership, and restaurant, retail, or hospitality technology experience.