Vice President, Digital Experience & Optimization

About the Role

The Vice President Digital Experience & Optimization leads the end-to-end digital storefront owning how the brand comes to life online and how customers experience navigate and shop the site.

This role is accountable for site experience UX/UI merchandising conversion rate optimization and digital operations ensuring the ecommerce platform delivers a seamless intuitive and high-performing customer journey that drives conversion engagement and loyalty.

Reporting to the Chief Ecommerce Officer this leader translates ecommerce strategy into executionowning how the site performs day-to-day and how it evolves over time to meet customer expectations and business ideal candidate combines consumer empathy strong UX/UI judgment commercial instinct and analytical rigorusing data to identify opportunities prioritize effectively and drive measurable improvements across the customer journey.

Youll Make a Difference By

Consumer Experience & UX/UI

• Owning the end-to-end digital customer experience with a strong emphasis on mobile-first design and performance
• Defining and driving the UX/UI vision and roadmap ensuring an intuitive engaging and frictionless journey from discovery through checkout
• Using behavioral data and customer insights to identifying friction points and prioritizing improvements
• Translating insights into clear hypotheses and test plans ensuring decisions are validated through measurable impact
• Partnering with Brand and Creative to bringing product storytelling and seasonal narratives to life on-site

Ecommerce Performance & Conversion Rate Optimization

• Owning site performance metrics (conversion AOV engagement funnel progression) and contributing directly to overall ecommerce revenue performance
• Leading the companys CRO function setting the vision for experimentation and optimization building a data-driven testing culture and ensuring insights from A/B testing and behavioral analytics consistently translating into measurable lifts in conversion and revenue
• Leading the site trading cadence (daily/weekly) identifying trends risks and opportunities and driving timely action
• Translating ecommerce merchandising and marketing strategies into high-impact on-site execution
• Partnering with Merchandising and Planning to optimizing product visibility sell-through and full-price realization

Site Operations & Merchandising

• Owning day-to-day site operations including content publishing promotional execution QA and incident response
• Establishing and enforcing operational standards and SLAs to ensuring consistent high-quality execution
• Leading the site merchandising strategy including navigation search category pages and product detail pages
• Owning the digital product catalog ensuring accuracy completeness and speed to market in a high-SKU environment
• Overseeing content management systems and the team operating them establishing processes governance and tooling enabling frequent efficient site updates while developing foundational strategy and infrastructure supporting personalization as a growing capability

Personalization & Analytics

• Leveraging site analytics and customer behavior data to diagnosing performance and uncovering growth opportunities
• Defining and monitoring core funnel metrics and translating insights into action across UX merchandising and personalization
• Leading a practical personalization strategy including recommendations search optimization and segmentation
• Building a test-and-learn culture ensuring decisions are hypothesis-driven and measured

Leadership & Cross-Functional Partnership

• Leading coaching and developing a high-performing team across UX/UI Site Ops Merchandising and Personalization
• Building a culture of accountability speed and continuous improvement
• Partnering closely with Technology Product and Marketing to aligning priorities and executing effectively
• Serving as a key member of the ecommerce leadership team partnering with the Chief Ecommerce Officer on planning and performance tracking

• Assisting with other responsibilities based on business needs.

About You

• 12 years of ecommerce leadership experience with ownership of site experience UX/UI and digital operations
• Experience operating at scale within an ecommerce business preferably in apparel footwear or consumer retail
• Proven ability to improve conversion engagement and customer experience through data-driven decision making
• Strong analytical capability; able to translate complex data into clear actions and business impact
• Deep expertise in UX/UI customer journey optimization and mobile-first ecommerce design
• Strong commercial acumen and experience managing in-season ecommerce performance
• Experience leading cross-functional initiatives across Marketing Technology and Product
• Demonstrated success building and leading multi-disciplinary teams
• Experience in an omni-channel environment (DTC retail/wholesale) preferred
• Background with premium or lifestyle brands preferred
• Experience leading major site redesigns replatforming or personalization initiatives preferred

About Ariat

Ariat is an innovative outdoor global brand with roots in equestrian performance. We develop high-quality footwear and apparel for people who ride work and play outdoors and care about performance quality comfort and style.

The salary range for this position is $270000 - $290000 per year.

The salary is determined by the education experience knowledge skills and abilities of the applicant internal equity and alignment with market data for geographic locations. Ariat in good faith believes that this posted compensation range is accurate for this role at this location at the time of this posting. This range may be modified in the future.

Ariats holistic benefits package for full-time team members includes (but is not limited to):

• Medical dental vision and life insurance options
• Expanded wellness and mental health benefits
• Paid time off (PTO) paid holidays and paid volunteer days
• 401(k) with company match
• Bonus incentive plans
• Team member discount on Ariat merchandise

Note: Availability of benefits may be subject to location & employment type and may have certain eligibility requirements. Ariat reserves the right to alter these benefits in whole or in part at any time without advance notice.

Ariat will consider qualified applicants including those with criminal histories in a manner consistent with state and local laws. Ariat is an Equal Opportunity Employer and considers applicants for employment without regard to race color religion sex orientation national origin age disability genetics or any other basis protected under federal state or local law. Ariat is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to candidates with disabilities. If you need an accommodation during the application process email .

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Please note that Ariat does not accept unsolicited resumes from recruiters or employment the absence of a signed Agreement Ariat will not consider or agree to payment of any referral compensation or recruiter/agency placement the event a recruiter or agency submits a resume or candidate without a previously signed Agreement Ariat explicitly reserves the right to pursue and hire those candidate(s) without any financial obligation to the recruiter or agency. Any unsolicited resumes including those submitted directly to hiring managers are deemed to be the property of Ariat.