Sr. Program Mgr., AI Kitchen Initiative, Worldwide Grocery Stores-Tech (WWGST)

Job description

Amazon's Worldwide Grocery Stores-Tech (WWGST) team is seeking an experienced Sr. Program Manager to lead the end-to-end launch and scaling of our new kitchen initiative, a first-of-its-kind program that reimagines how customers discover, personalize, and enjoy prepared food.

In this role, you will be joining at the ground floor of a new-to-the-world innovation in prepared food experiences. This role sits at the intersection of program management, finance, culinary design, and customer experience, owning the program from site selection through steady-state operations. You will drive cross-functional alignment across real estate, finance, culinary, vendor management, and customer-facing teams to deliver a seamless kitchen experience that delights customers while meeting cost and quality targets.

This role requires ensuring a positive customer experience by providing courteous, efficient service and maintaining adherence to all applicable health, safety, and food safety regulations.

Key job responsibilities

Program Leadership & Site Setup

- Site Setup & Launch: Own the end-to-end program plan for new kitchen site launches, including facility identification, design requirements, permitting, equipment procurement, and go-live readiness. Define and manage critical-path milestones and cross-functional dependencies.

- Stakeholder Management: Serve as the single-threaded owner for this 0-to-1 initiative. Establish and maintain collaborative relationships with department leaders, vendors, and cross-functional partners. Drive L10-level program updates and executive reviews.

- Executive Reporting: Provide regular updates to senior leadership, manage risks/blockers, and drive decision-making across ambiguous, uncharted territory. Consistently communicate and model organizational vision and goals.

Financial Management

- CapEx/OpEx Management: Develop and manage capital expenditure budgets for kitchen buildouts. Own ongoing operating expense forecasting, variance analysis, and cost optimization levers. Partner with Finance to model unit economics and drive P&L accountability.

- Profitability & Expense Control: Accountable for monitoring and achieving sales, purchasing, and labor targets. Apply proficient mathematical skills for assessing financial performance, monitoring profitability, and managing budgets.

Menu & Product

- Menu Design & Curation: Collaborate with culinary teams to define menu offerings that balance customer demand, operational complexity, food cost targets, and nutritional considerations. Drive menu iteration based on sales data, customer feedback, and seasonal availability.

- Product Assortment: Maintain proper product assortment and merchandising standards. Sustain exceptional level of knowledge and awareness of relevant competitors and industry trends to inform menu strategy.

Vendor & Contract Management

- 3P Vendor Contracts: Negotiate and manage third-party contracts including food suppliers, equipment vendors, maintenance providers, and logistics partners. Define SLAs, performance metrics, and escalation paths.

- Vendor Performance: Drive vendor performance reviews and continuous improvement. Establish and maintain collaborative and productive working relationships with all vendor partners.

Customer Enrollment & Feedback

- Customer Enrollment: Design and execute customer acquisition and enrollment strategies for the kitchen program. Partner with Marketing to develop go-to-market plans, trial programs, and retention mechanisms. Track enrollment funnels and optimize conversion rates.

- Customer Feedback Processing: Build and own the voice-of-customer (VoC) program. Leverage GenAI for sentiment analysis, theme extraction, and automated insight generation to establish scalable feedback collection mechanisms and closed-loop response processes.

- Customer Service Standards: Hold team members accountable for delivering exceptional customer service. Maintain awareness of customer flows and needs; direct teams as necessary to satisfy and delight customers.

Regulatory Compliance

- Compliance Oversight: Ensure adherence to all applicable health and safety regulations including Food Safety and regulatory duties. Maintain advanced knowledge of regulatory and safety policies and procedures relevant to kitchen operations.