Associate Director, Castlegate Forwarding Americas Operations

Wayfair - Boston, MA

Full-time - Mid Level

Boston, MA

Furniture, Home Furnishings, Electronics, and Appliance Retailers

About the position

Wayfair is seeking an Associate Director for its Castlegate Forwarding Americas Operations, a role that demands an inspirational leader with a robust background in logistics, process and project management, analytics, and people development. The ideal candidate will have a proven track record of building and nurturing high-performing teams. This position is pivotal in leading the execution, improvement, and expansion of landside operations for ocean freight across the US and Canada. The successful candidate will act as Wayfair's lead expert on drayage and destination port operations, ensuring that the company maintains its competitive edge in the logistics sector. In this role, you will lead and develop a team of over 25 associates and managers, managing the North America drayage product, which includes pricing, carrier sourcing, and product design. You will be responsible for building key metrics that define success for the team, enabling effective day-to-day management and capacity planning. Additionally, you will design and launch origin operations for new market geographies in the Americas, including the upcoming freight operations in Brazil. Your strategic vision will be crucial as you define and communicate a 6-12 month work plan, identifying opportunities to drive measurable impact across broader KPIs and OKRs. Your analytical skills will be put to the test as you identify opportunities through data-driven analysis and observations, prioritizing process improvements for all destination operations. You will ensure effective coordination with Asia- and EU-based operations and enable effective inbound forecasting and planning for the Network Management team and the Wayfair Fulfillment Center network. Furthermore, you will oversee impact measurement, reporting, and trend analysis, consulting with stakeholders based on results. Your contributions will also extend to developing tools and processes that drive efficiencies for the team and simplify day-to-day operations. Building strong partnerships and collaboration with leaders and stakeholders will be essential to ensure consistency in programs with peers, all while understanding strategic business goals and delivering solutions to navigate roadblocks.

Responsibilities

• Lead execution, improvement, and expansion of US and Canada landside operations for ocean freight.
• Act as Wayfair's lead expert on drayage and destination port operations.
• Lead and develop a team of 25+ Associates and Managers.
• Manage the North America drayage product (pricing, carrier sourcing, product design).
• Build out key metrics that define success for the team and enable day-to-day management and capacity planning.
• Design, bring to launch, and ultimately own origin operations for any new market geographies in the Americas.
• Define and communicate a 6-12 month work plan, identifying opportunities to drive measurable impact across broader KPIs and OKRs.
• Identify opportunities through a combination of data-driven analysis and observations.
• Prioritize and enable process improvement for all destination operations.
• Ensure effective coordination with Asia- and EU-based operations.
• Enable effective inbound forecasting and planning for the Network Management team and the Wayfair Fulfillment Center network.
• Oversee impact measurement, reporting, and trend analysis and consult with stakeholders based on results.
• Contribute to the development of tools and processes that drive efficiencies for the team and simplify the day-to-day operations.
• Build strong partnerships and collaboration with leaders and stakeholders to enable consistency in programs with peers.
• Understand strategic business goals and deliver strategies and solutions for achieving those goals and navigating roadblocks.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree required, Master's degree preferred.
• 10+ years of experience in freight forwarding, ecommerce operations, or retail operations.
• 5+ years of leadership experience; preferably including leading teams of over 20.
• Experience interfacing with Sr. Leadership; developing relationships, objectively challenging, presenting, reporting, and consulting.
• Ability to continuously execute the present day process at a high level while working to improve, expand, and transform the operation in parallel.
• Ability to collaboratively partner across all levels and functions throughout the organization to assess talent development needs, build long-term strategies, and recommend viable design solutions.
• Proven experience developing global data-driven processes.
• Articulate, persuasive communicator across multiple organizational levels.
• Ability to evaluate data to illustrate meaningful performance trends and identify opportunity areas.
• Critical thinking and creative problem solving skills and flexibility to adjust to frequent changes in training priorities and schedules to accommodate business needs.
• Self-starter with the ability to work independently in a fast-moving environment with a certain level of ambiguity.