Head of E-Commerce Operations

Sobeys; Vaughan; On-site; CAD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

Sobeys is seeking an experienced Head of E-Commerce Operations to lead end-to-end operational strategy for our e-commerce business in Canada. You will oversee automated fulfilment centres, centralized contact centre, and delivery operations, driving service quality, efficiency and financial performance.

You will shape operational policy, build strong teams, and partner with Sobeys, Empire, and Ocado to scale growth and deliver on P&L commitments across fulfilment, contact centre and delivery.

Qualifications

• 12+ years leading operations, e-commerce, or supply chain in a tech-enabled environment.
• Experience directing multi-site or national teams across fulfilment, delivery, or contact centre.
• Experience in grocery/retail or consumer goods logistics environment preferred.
• Track record of building, launching or operating automated fulfilment or distribution centres.

Responsibilities

• Set clear expectations and create accountability for results.
• Build a customer-centric culture grounded in service, reliability, safety and continuous improvement.
• Engage, empower and develop teams to perform at their best.
• Build leadership depth through succession planning and coaching of leaders.
• Collaborate across functions to solve complex business challenges and align teams.
• Lead with an enterprise mindset, balancing customer experience, capacity and financial outcomes.
• Champion innovation, disciplined execution and new ways of working.
• Communicate trade-offs and measurable outcomes for complex decisions.

Skills

Leadership

Strategic thinking

Change management

Stakeholder management

Data-driven decisions

Customer focus

Team development

Operational excellence

Education

Post-secondary degree in business/ops/engineering

MBA (asset)

Tools

Ocado Smart Platform

Job description

Ready to Make an Impact?

We are looking for an experienced and forward-thinking leader to join our E-Commerce team as Head of E-Commerce Operations.

In this highly visible leadership role, you will shape and lead the end-to-end operational strategy for our e-commerce business. You will oversee our automated customer fulfilment centres, centralized customer contact centre and delivery operations, ensuring we consistently deliver an exceptional experience for our customers while achieving our operational and financial commitments.

You will lead complex, technology-enabled operations across Canada, build strong and capable teams, and work closely with partners across Sobeys, Empire and Ocado to strengthen performance and support the continued growth of our e-commerce business.

Here’s Where You’ll Be Focusing:

• Build, lead and develop high-performing operations and teams, creating a customer-centric culture, strengthening leadership depth and maintaining workforce stability.
• Develop and execute the centralized contact centre strategy, operating model and service standards to ensure customer concerns, refunds and service recovery are managed promptly and effectively.
• Lead the operational performance of highly automated e-commerce customer fulfilment centres across Canada, with accountability for service, capacity, productivity, cost management and financial outcomes.
• Lead delivery and fleet operations, with accountability for service, efficiency, delivery-promise performance, last-mile quality and customer experience.
• Deliver against e-commerce P&L commitments, key financial targets and operational performance measures across fulfilment centres, contact centre and delivery operations.
• Establish national logistics, delivery and operating standards that support a consistent customer experience and scalable growth across banners, geographies and fulfilment channels.
• Translate the e-commerce roadmap into clear operational deliverables, milestones and performance expectations, ensuring business decisions are executable and aligned to customer and financial outcomes.
• Use data, operational insights and structured problem-solving to improve service, labour productivity, capacity, availability, inventory performance and cost management.
• Build effective partnerships across customer service, operations, logistics, health and safety, food safety, merchandising, category management, marketing, human resources, finance and technology to deliver shared business priorities.
• Manage strategic partner performance, including Ocado and other technology, logistics and service partners, to drive issue resolution, continuous improvement and shared business outcomes.
• Build operational resilience through robust peak planning, contingency management and incident response processes for weather events, system disruptions, capacity constraints and seasonal demand spikes.
• Ensure strong health and safety, food safety, regulatory compliance and cold-chain standards across all operational activities.

What You Have to Offer

• 12+ years of progressive leadership experience in operations, e-commerce, retail, supply chain, fulfilment, logistics, customer service or a similarly complex, technology-enabled operating environment.
• 5+ years leading large, multi-site or national teams, ideally across fulfilment, delivery, contact centre, store operations or distribution operations.
• Experience operating in a grocery, retail, consumer goods, supply chain, logistics or technology-enabled service environment is strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated experience building, launching, scaling or operating automated fulfilment or distribution centres.
• Experience leading customer contact centre operations, delivery operations and fleet management.
• Strong financial and commercial acumen, including experience managing operating costs, budgets, productivity, business performance and P&L commitments.
• Experience leading large-scale operational transformation, including operating model changes, business scaling, process redesign and change management.
• Strong experience in labour planning, workforce management, scheduling, productivity improvement and operational capacity planning.
• Demonstrated ability to manage strategic vendors and partners, including performance governance, issue resolution and continuous improvement.
• Strong understanding of food safety, health and safety, regulatory compliance and quality standards in a grocery, retail, fulfilment or distribution environment.
• A proven ability to build, engage and develop diverse, high-performing teams.
• Strong strategic thinking, logical problem-solving and decision-making capabilities.
• Experience working across multiple functions and influencing senior stakeholders in a complex, matrixed organization.
• Proven ability to translate complex operational performance, risks and trade-offs into clear executive-level recommendations and updates.
• A customer-first mindset and a strong understanding of how operational decisions affect service, loyalty and business performance.
• Experience leading through peak periods, operational incidents, service disruptions or other high-pressure operating environments.
• Post-secondary education in business, operations, supply chain, engineering or a related discipline is preferred; equivalent progressive leadership experience will also be considered.
• MBA, operations, supply chain or continuous improvement certification would be considered an asset.
• Experience with the Ocado Smart Platform, automated grocery fulfilment, digital commerce, marketplaces, last-mile delivery, contact centre operations or comparable technologies would be considered an asset.

How You Will Lead:

You will:

• Set clear expectations and create accountability for results.
• Build a customer-centric culture grounded in service, reliability, safety and continuous improvement.
• Engage, empower and develop teams to perform at their best.
• Build leadership depth through succession planning, coaching and development of high-potential site, contact centre and delivery leaders.
• Collaborate across functions to solve complex business challenges and align teams around shared priorities.
• Lead with an enterprise mindset, balancing customer experience, operational feasibility, team capacity and financial outcomes.
• Champion innovation, disciplined execution and new ways of working.
• Bring clarity to complex, cross-functional decisions by communicating trade-offs and measurable outcomes.

How Success Will Be Measured:

Success in this role will be reflected through:

• Customer satisfaction, retention and service recovery outcomes.
• On-time delivery, delivery-promise performance and drops per vehicle.
• Contact centre performance, including customer contacts per order and resolution effectiveness.
• Delivery-fleet performance, last-mile quality and operating efficiency.
• Operating-cost, SG&A, labour productivity and cost-per-order management.
• Achievement of revenue, project-budget and e-commerce P&L commitments.
• Progress against the e-commerce roadmap and key operational milestones.
• Strategic partner performance and progress against continuous improvement plans.
• Health and safety performance, including safety incidents and compliance outcomes.
• Peak-period readiness and operational resilience.
• Team capability, engagement, succession coverage and workforce stability.

Why Join Us?

This is an opportunity to lead one of the most important and complex areas of our growing e-commerce business. You will have the ability to influence how we serve customers across Canada, shape the future of our operational network and develop the teams and capabilities required to support our long-term growth.

We welcome applications from internal candidates who bring strong enterprise knowledge, a passion for serving customers and the leadership capability to deliver results at scale.