Embark on a rewarding career with Sobeys Inc., celebrated among Canada’s Top 100 employers where your unique contributions drive success.
Role Overview & Purpose
The Director, Digital Experience is responsible for defining and continuously evolving the digital product and customer experience across Empire’s retail banner websites and digital commerce experiences.
This leader will own the vision for how customers discover, shop, engage and transact digitally, translating customer needs and enterprise strategy into intuitive, frictionless and high-performing experiences. The role will lead the UI/UX and digital product agenda, establishing customer journeys, experience principles, product priorities and a roadmap that drives measurable improvements in customer engagement, conversion, satisfaction and loyalty.
Working closely with Technology, Site Merchandising, Marketing, Loyalty, Analytics and Operations, the Director will ensure the digital storefront evolves as a strategic growth platform while creating a consistent experience across banners and channels.
Key Responsibilities
Digital Experience Strategy & Vision
- Define the digital customer experience vision and multi-year roadmap across retail banner websites and digital commerce experiences.
- Translate enterprise customer and eCommerce strategy into clear digital experience principles, priorities and capabilities.
- Establish a best-in-class view of the digital storefront, continually benchmarking the experience against leading retailers and digital platforms.
- Identify emerging customer behaviours, technologies and experience innovations that can materially improve the shopping journey.
Digital Product Leadership
- Own the business product vision and priorities for the digital storefront and customer-facing capabilities.
- Translate customer and business needs into clear product requirements, outcomes and roadmap priorities.
- Partner closely with Technology product and engineering teams to shape solutions, resolve trade-offs and deliver the experience roadmap.
- Establish clear product outcomes and measures of success rather than defining success solely through feature delivery.
- Balance enterprise capabilities with banner-specific customer and business needs.
Customer Journey & UI/UX
- Own the end-to-end digital customer journey, including discovery, navigation, search, browse, product detail, cart, checkout, account and post-purchase experiences.
- Lead UI/UX strategy, user research, journey mapping and usability testing.
- Champion accessibility, intuitive interaction design and consistent experience patterns.
- Ensure customer insights and behavioural data directly inform product and design decisions.
- Identify and systematically remove friction across the digital shopping journey.
Experience Optimization
- Establish a disciplined experimentation and optimization program across the digital experience.
- Use behavioural analytics, customer research, experimentation and business performance data to identify opportunities.
- Define KPIs spanning conversion, engagement, task completion, customer satisfaction and friction.
- Build a continuous improvement backlog focused on measurable customer and business outcomes.
Cross-Functional Leadership
- Partner with Site Merchandising to ensure assortment, promotions, product presentation and merchandising strategies are effectively translated into the digital shopping experience.
- Partner with Marketing, Loyalty and personalization teams to create connected customer experiences across owned channels.
- Partner with Operations to ensure digital experiences accurately reflect fulfillment capabilities and the end-to-end customer promise.
- Act as the business-side experience leader with Technology, creating clarity on customer needs, priorities and desired outcomes.
- Influence senior stakeholders across the enterprise to drive customer-first decision making.
Team Leadership
- Lead and develop a high-performing team spanning digital product and UI/UX and experience design capabilities.
- Build strong product management, customer insight and experience-design disciplines.
- Create clear accountability while enabling teams to make data-driven decisions close to the customer.
Qualifications & Experience
- 10+ years of progressive experience across digital product management, digital experience, UX/UI or eCommerce, ideally within complex omnichannel retail or consumer businesses.
- Demonstrated experience owning digital product vision, customer journeys and product roadmaps for high-traffic transactional digital experiences.
- Strong understanding of UI/UX, customer research, information architecture, experimentation, accessibility and digital analytics.
- Demonstrated ability to translate strategy and customer insight into product requirements, priorities and measurable customer outcomes.
- Experience working closely with enterprise Technology, product and engineering organizations and effectively navigating business and technical trade-offs.
- Strong commercial acumen with an understanding of the relationship between customer experience, conversion, engagement, loyalty and business performance.
- Proven ability to lead through influence across Marketing, Merchandising, Technology, Analytics and Operations.
- Strong people leadership with demonstrated ability to build modern product and experience capabilities.
- Executive-level communication, strategic thinking and stakeholder management skills.
Scope Boundaries
This role owns the digital storefront product vision, customer journeys, UI/UX and experience optimization. Site Merchandising owns digital merchandising strategy and execution, including how assortment, promotions and product presentation are activated within the storefront. Technology product and engineering teams remain accountable for technical solution design and delivery, in partnership with this role.
Who we are
Sobeys is one of Canada’s leading grocery retailers, with more than 1,600 stores across all 10 provinces and banners including Sobeys, Safeway, IGA, Foodland, FreshCo, Thrifty Foods, and Lawtons Drug Stores. Our 128,000 teammates and franchise affiliates are passionate about delivering great food and exceptional experiences to our customers and communities.
Learn more about our story and culture:
Who We Are | Why Work With Us
Total Rewards
We offer a Total Rewards package designed to support teammates at work and in life. Depending on role and eligibility, teammates may receive health and dental benefits, retirement and savings programs including an Employee Share Ownership Plan, a 10% in-store discount at participating banners, virtual healthcare and an Employee and Family Assistance Program, learning and development opportunities, parental leave top-up, and paid vacation.
Sobeys is committed to providing a compensation structure that is flexible, equitable and competitive in the market to enable performance and growth. To learn more about this opportunity including the expected range of compensation in accordance with Pay Transparency Legislation where required please click the “I’m interested” or "Apply" button above. Individual compensation is determined based on qualifications, experience, and internal equity within the range provided.
Additional Information
External websites may share our organization's job postings which includes compensation information based on similar roles and market benchmarks. These figures are provided for general comparison purposes only and are not issued or verified by our organization.
We may use Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to support efficiencies in the candidate screening, assessment, and recruitment processes. These AI tools do not make hiring decisions on behalf of the Company. Hiring decisions are made by our Hiring Teams.
Sobeys is committed to creating accessible and inclusive hiring processes. We will work with applicants requesting accommodation at any stage of the recruitment process.
Please note: Successful candidates will be required to provide documentation to prove their legal ability to work in the position during the onboarding process. Documentation will be assessed by the employer prior to commencement of work.
