Global Industry Lead, Retail

Global Industry Lead, Retail

SPECS is seeking a Global Industry Lead, Retail to help define and scale how augmented reality glasses are adopted across the retail industry. This is a manager-level individual contributor role responsible for leading our retail industry strategy, shaping repeatable go-to-market motions, and driving customer engagement from early opportunity through closed business. The role sits at the intersection of industry strategy, partnerships, solution development, sales, and market education.

In this role, you will take explicit responsibility for retail-related engagements tied to the positioning and the sale of SPECS augmented reality glasses to retail clients. You will work cross-functionally to define priority use cases, build the partner ecosystem required to deliver them, and help bring compelling offerings to market for one of our most important enterprise verticals.

What you'll do

• Own the global retail industry strategy for the SPECS augmented reality glasses business, including positioning, target accounts, use case priorities, and market development plans.
• Identify and prioritize the retail workflows where augmented reality glasses can create measurable business value, with an emphasis on scalable, repeatable solutions.
• Translate retail customer needs into clear offerings and solution narratives in partnership with product, design, engineering, sales, and marketing teams.
• Build and strengthen a partner network of services partners, solution partners, systems integrators, and industry specialists that can help accelerate retail adoption at scale.
• Work closely with Partner Development Managers and Technical Partner Managers to drive partner onboarding, solution readiness, certification, enablement, and field execution.
• Facilitate partner and customer enablement by helping stakeholders understand the SPECS platform, value proposition, and path from pilot to scaled deployment.
• Own the customer pipeline and sales cycle for the retail vertical, from demand generation and qualification through business development, solution shaping, and commercial close.
• Partner with internal and external technical teams to support complex enterprise sales motions, including solution architecture, integration planning, and deployment readiness.
• Represent SPECS at major retail and enterprise industry events, and lead planning around our presence at key retail moments such as NRF and other relevant forums worldwide.
• Curate and contribute to retail-focused thought leadership including white papers, knowledge base content, customer stories, and demand generation programs.
• Help shape executive briefings, workshops, and retail-focused events hosted at SPECS campuses to educate customers, partners, and industry stakeholders on the value of augmented reality in retail.
• Build trusted relationships with senior leaders across retailers, strategic partners, and the broader retail innovation ecosystem.

Minimum qualifications

• 10+ years leading strategy, business development, sales, partnerships or GTM across customers in the retail industry.
• Experience applying industrial technology, enterprise software, spatial computing, XR, AR, or an adjacent field tech in retail.
• Deep understanding of the retail industry, including store operations, omnichannel fulfillment, inventory workflows, workforce enablement, visual merchandising, and customer experience.
• Track record of building industry strategy and converting that strategy into customer pipeline, partner motions, and measurable commercial outcomes.
• Experience working cross-functionally across product, technical, marketing, partner, and sales organizations to bring new solutions to market.
• Ability to engage credibly with senior customer stakeholders across operations, IT, innovation, finance, and line-of-business leadership.
• Strong executive communication and storytelling skills, with the ability to create compelling industry narratives, customer-facing content, and thought leadership.
• Comfort operating in ambiguity and helping build a category and market motion that is still emerging.
• Willingness to travel globally for customer meetings, partner engagements, and industry events.

Preferred qualifications

• Experience in augmented reality, extended reality, spatial computing, smart glasses, wearable computing, or adjacent emerging technologies.
• Experience working with or around enterprise AR hardware and software ecosystems.
• Prior experience at or in close partnership with companies such as Microsoft HoloLens, Magic Leap, or similar platforms is strongly preferred.
• Experience working with large systems integrators, strategic consultancies, or solution providers serving global retail clients.
• Familiarity with enterprise software integrations and the operational requirements associated with deploying new technology into business environments.