Vice President, Strategic Provider Operations

Role Overview

• Establish and lead a centralized governance model for all MSPs supporting technology services.
• Define and enforce common standards, obligations, and metrics to ensure coordinated delivery and unified outcomes across providers.
• Act as a strategic integrator of vendor services, ensuring alignment with business objectives and operational priorities.
• Develop and mature Gap’s MSP management competencies across Gap’s IT organization, including training, coaching, and institutionalizing best practices, so that Gap’s IT leaders and teams can effectively govern, manage by outcomes, and collaborate in a multi-provider ecosystem.
• Serve as the executive point of contact for strategic MSPs, managing executive-level relationships and driving long-term value along with executive sponsors.
• Facilitate structured collaboration across partners through business reviews, joint planning sessions, and strategic steering committees.
• Foster a culture of transparency, trust, and shared accountability among providers and internal stakeholders.
• Provide executive oversight to ensure providers deliver on Gap’s strategic outcomes—including modernization, adoption of AI capabilities, provider and industry best practices, and delivery of innovation—beyond contractual minimums.
• Build and lead high-performing teams with expertise in performance management, governance, and contract optimization.
• Ensure these teams establish and enforce SLAs, KPIs, XLAs, OLAs, and compliance metrics, and drive provider accountability for proactive remediation.
• Oversee the development, execution, and ongoing management of contracts, ensuring terms reflect performance expectations, risk mitigation, and value realization.
• Drive financial oversight, including budgeting, forecasting, and cost optimization strategies for provider services.
• Lead contract renewals, negotiations, amendments, and terminations in partnership with Legal, Finance, and Procurement teams.
• Partner with internal stakeholders and providers to forecast demand, allocate resources, and scale capacity to meet evolving business and technology needs.
• Ensure providers have the right skills, bandwidth, and geographic coverage to support operational resiliency and strategic growth.
• Address resource gaps proactively and coordinate provider staffing strategies during peak periods, transformation efforts, or incidents.
• Co-lead initiatives that promote innovation within the provider ecosystem, leveraging emerging technologies, process automation, and new delivery models.
• Champion a continuous improvement culture, identifying opportunities to increase efficiency, reduce risk, and enhance service experience.
• Drive innovation workshops, pilot programs, and best practice sharing across partners to evolve service capabilities and delivery excellence.
• Champion adoption of provider best practices, including AI-enabled operations (AIOps), AI-first data lifecycle practices, and AI-first software delivery lifecycles.
• Advocate for and secure adoption of these practices across Gap’s retained IT organization to ensure modernization, productivity, and business outcomes are realized.
• Lead Gap’s transition to and ongoing execution of outcomes-based, progressive outsourcing models, ensuring these constructs deliver measurable business value.
• Align provider roadmaps, milestones, and initiatives with internal business and technology goals.
• Enable seamless collaboration and handoffs between providers and internal teams to avoid silos and duplication.
• Ensure all providers operate under a "one team" mindset, driving cohesive, coordinated service delivery.
• Track, Audit, and enforce outcomes and obligations across all providers.
• Proactively manage third-party risks, ensuring provider adherence to security, privacy, compliance, and ethical standards.
• Maintain and enforce internal policies and procedures to ensure providers meet all contractual and regulatory obligations.

Requirements

• 15+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, Data/AI development, application development, sustainment, and delivery leadership, including governance of large-scale MSP engagements.
• Demonstrated success in leading outcome-based outsourcing relationships, managing application and data services at scale, and driving adoption of provider innovations (e.g., AI-enabled delivery models).
• At least 5 years in an executive leadership role with responsibility for multi-provider ecosystems managing complex outsourcing contracts and multisourced MSP ecosystems globally.
• Demonstrated experience in Service Integration and Management (SIAM), including leading in multi-provider environments where outcomes depend on seamless integration across multiple MSPs, retained teams, and third-party partners.
• Demonstrated success in leading performance management, financial planning, capacity scaling, and cross-provider integration.
• Strong commercial acumen and expertise in contract lifecycle management, negotiation, and value assurance.
• Experience driving innovation initiatives and embedding continuous improvement within a provider operating model.
• Strong leadership, communication, and executive relationship skills.
• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Information Technology, or a related field required; Master’s degree or MBA preferred.