Director, Data Products

Overview

The Director, Data Products is responsible for building and leading New Balance’s enterprise data product capabilities – ensuring that every digital product is underpinned by accurate, well‑governed, and business‑ready data. Reporting to the VP, Data & AI, this leader owns the strategy, team, and operating model that delivers data as a managed product with clear ownership, measurable quality, and defined consumers.

Responsibilities

• Define and drive the Data Products strategy & operating model, establishing the vision, principles and operating model for managing data as a product across New Balance.
• Define the portfolio of enterprise data products and ensure each has clear ownership, quality standards, service level expectations, and engaged consumers and stakeholders.
• Partner with consumers, digital product teams, and engineering to continuously evolve and embed the operating model.
• Lead Data Product Owners for Enterprise Data Domains and develop a clear data product vision and corresponding OKRs that align desired outcomes across stakeholder groups.
• Build, prioritize, communicate, and champion data product roadmaps across Business Transformation, Engineering, and business stakeholder groups.
• Build a high‑performing team of Data Leads supporting Digital Products, embedding data quality standards in products, and championing data standards in agile planning and retrospectives.
• Partner with Enterprise Data Governance, Platform, and Architecture teams to operationalize monitoring, alerting, and remediation workflows for data quality.
• Champion the use of AI to ensure data quality standards are met for Data & Digital Products and measure and communicate data quality improvements to business stakeholders and executives.

Qualifications

• Strategic leadership: Demonstrated ability to translate enterprise strategy into an executable roadmap, define success measures, and drive sustained outcomes in a complex, cross‑functional environment.
• Retail and/or e‑commerce domain fluency: Experience delivering data capabilities that support consumer journeys and merchandising/commercial processes (e.g., product, customer, inventory, pricing, promotions, fulfillment) and partnering with digital product teams.
• AI enablement mindset: Working knowledge of AI/ML and GenAI concepts, including scaling AI responsibly (data readiness, evaluation/measurement, risk controls, human‑in‑the‑loop, monitoring) and ability to translate business problems into data/AI solution approaches.
• Data integrity and governance capability: Experience partnering with governance, architecture, and engineering teams on data quality management, master/reference data concepts, metadata/catalog, lineage, privacy, and controls; able to balance enablement with risk management.
• Strong decision‑making and execution: Ability to synthesize complex and sometimes contradictory information, make timely recommendations, and drive execution through others.
• Exceptional communication and influence: Executive‑ready storytelling and facilitation skills; able to run business and technical briefings, align diverse stakeholders, and create a transparent flow of information across levels and functions.
• Collaboration and inclusion: Track record of building partnerships across organizational boundaries, creating an environment where diverse perspectives are sought and valued.
• Talent and capability development: People leadership experience and/or demonstrated ability to lead through influence – coaching teams, enabling adoption, and building a culture of continuous learning and data literacy.
• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Information Systems, Computer Science, Data/Analytics, Engineering, or a related field required; Master’s degree (MBA, MS) preferred.

Preferred Technical Toolkit

• Familiarity with modern data platforms (cloud data warehouse/lakehouse), data modeling, data integration patterns, BI/semantic layers, experimentation/measurement, and governance tooling (catalog/lineage); comfort working with Agile/iterative delivery approaches.

Salary

Boston, MA Headquarters – Pay Range: $198,900.00 – $258,300.00 – $317,750.00 Annual (actual base pay varying based upon relevant experience, time in role, internal equity, geographic location, and more.)

Equal Opportunity Employer

New Balance provides equal opportunities for all current and prospective associates to ensure that employment, training, compensation, transfer, promotion and other terms, conditions and privileges of employment are provided without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, handicap, genetic information and/or status as an Armed Forces service medal veteran, recently separated veteran, qualified disabled veteran or other protected veteran, or any other protected status.