Director of Technology

Alliance Material Handling, Inc.; Jessup (MD); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

ESOP

401(k) with company match

Healthcare options

Paid time off

Disability & life insurance

Job summary

Alliance Material Handling, Inc. is seeking a Director of Technology to own the technology roadmap, lead ERP evaluation and implementation, and introduce AI/automation into operations.

The role requires cross-functional leadership across software, security, data, and integrations, with accountability for project discipline and vendor governance. You will drive a program-led approach, retire Excel reporting, and build a single source of truth for financial and operational data across multiple

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in a business, engineering, information systems or related field.
• Proven ability to run complex, cross-functional projects to completion.
• Experience leading ERP evaluations, selections or implementations.
• Strong data analytics and vendor/partner management capability.
• Excellent written and verbal communication for executive audiences.

Responsibilities

• Own and maintain a multi-year technology roadmap aligned to business goals.
• Lead ERP evaluation, selection and end-to-end implementation efforts.
• Build AI and automation use-case backlog and drive production value.
• Retire Excel as the primary reporting layer and establish a single source of truth.
• Manage software vendors, partners and licensing with Finance.
• Drive customer-driven system requirements and deliver timely reporting.

Skills

Program management

ERP evaluation

Cross-functional leadership

Data analytics

Security awareness

Vendor management

Communication

Strategic planning

Education

Bachelor's degree in business/engineering/IS

Tools

Microsoft Dynamics 365

NetSuite

NAV/Business Central

Job description

This position is on site in Jessup, MD 5 days a week.

The Director of Technology is the single accountable owner of technology at Alliance Material Handling. This role sets and maintains a multi-year technology roadmap covering software, security, data and the skills required to run it, leads the evaluation and implementation of our next ERP platform, builds the data and integration layer that everything else depends on, and brings artificial intelligence and automation into our operations as a working capability rather than a series of demonstrations. The role also owns the project discipline by which all of it gets delivered.

This is a build role. Alliance runs fourteen systems with limited integration, a core ERP that offers no project accounting, and a $210M Warehouse Solutions business that manages job costing, WIP and milestone billing in Excel. We have improved in most of these areas over the last several years, but almost always through brute force, meaning more people, rather than technology. The first requirement for this role is not deep technical expertise. It is the ability to run complex, cross-functional projects to completion and to map and redesign the processes underneath them. We are looking for a program leader who is technically fluent, not a technologist who also manages projects.

What You’ll Do

• Technology Strategy & Roadmap
  • Own and maintain a multi-year technology roadmap covering software, data, staffing and skills, aligned to where the business is going rather than where it has been
  • Consolidate technology ownership that today is shared across several executives, and serve as the single point of accountability for technology decisions and outcomes, including networking and security
  • Bring recommendations to the leadership team with costs, risks, payback and a phased plan, and be accountable for delivering what you recommend
  • Maintain a prioritized, quantified backlog of technology investments and revisit it as the business changes
• ERP Evaluation & Implementation
  • Run an evidence-based evaluation across candidate platforms, scored against documented business requirements and customer demands
  • Own the relationship with the current ERP vendor, including support obligations, end-of-life exposure, licensing and renewal pricing
  • Lead implementation once a platform is selected, including scope, sequencing, budget, data migration, testing, training and cutover
  • Inherit and build on a completed third-party assessment and an open recommendation rather than starting from a blank page
• AI & Automation
  • Build and maintain a prioritized, quantified AI and automation use‑case backlog tied to specific processes and dollars
  • Take a small number of use cases into production and prove value in hours and dollars rather than demonstrations
  • Establish guardrails for data security, accuracy and human review before any use case reaches production
  • Report results honestly, including the use cases that do not work and should be stopped
• Data, Integration & Reporting
  • Retire Excel as the reporting layer for job costing, WIP, milestone billing and other core processes
  • Establish a single source of truth for operational and financial reporting across both the dealership and Warehouse Solutions businesses
  • Reduce the share of finance and operations time spent assembling data rather than analyzing it
• Vendor & Partner Management
  • Select, scope and manage software vendors, implementation partners and development partners and own the relationship with our existing 3rd party help desk, network and security vendor and ensure effective support across the organization for a competitive cost
  • Hold partners to delivery against written acceptance standards and dates, renegotiate scope where needed, and end relationships that are not working
  • Direct outside advisors rather than being directed by them
  • Review and negotiate technology agreements, renewals and pricing in partnership with Finance
• Customer-Driven Requirements
  • Own the systems response to customer reporting requirements, including standardized weekly progress reporting, daily reporting when a phase slips, material readiness confirmation by component, and consistent units of measure across the life of a project
  • Work directly with Warehouse Solutions leadership to translate customer requirements into system and process requirements
  • Deliver a working answer on the required timeline, including an interim manual answer where the system answer is not yet ready
• Team, Knowledge & Key-Person Risk
  • Lead existing and future IT team, including existing and future roles as needed
  • Identify critical functions that depend on a single individual and retire those dependencies through documentation, cross‑training and system change
  • Build and maintain documentation standards so that knowledge does not live in one person’s head
  • Partner with department leaders to build technical fluency across the business
• Project Execution Standards
  • Establish and enforce a simple project standard: a named decision that changes, a measured baseline before we start, one named owner, a date with a gate where the answer can be no, and a named person who runs it once it is live
  • Apply that standard to every technology initiative in the company, including work led by other departments
  • Report status, risks and gate decisions to the leadership team on a regular cadence
  • Close out projects with measured before-and-after results

What You Need

• Minimum of 7 years leading technology programs in an operating business such as distribution, construction, field service, manufacturing or logistics
• Demonstrated delivery of at least one significant ERP evaluation, selection or implementation, ideally in a project-based or job-costing environment
• Bachelor’s degree in a business, engineering, information systems or related field, or equivalent combination of education and experience
• Proven ability to run complex, cross-functional projects to completion, with measured results you can describe in detail
• Genuine process mapping and redesign capability, including the ability to sit with a coordinator, document how work actually happens, and design something better that people will use
• Strong data and analytics fluency, including an understanding of what good data architecture looks like and when you are being sold something that is not
• Vendor and partner management experience, including holding a partner accountable, renegotiating a scope and recommending that we walk away
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain a technology trade-off to an executive team in business terms and a process change to a technician or coordinator in technical terms
• Experience in a multi-site business with field operations is preferred, as is exposure to Microsoft Dynamics 365, NAV, Business Central, NetSuite or other equipment dealer management systems
• Practical AI or automation experience deployed to production rather than piloted is preferred
• Ability to travel periodically to branch and customer locations domestically
• Ability to sit and work at a computer for extended periods while performing essential job duties

What We Offer

• Employee Ownership (ESOP) - build long-term wealth as an owner
• 401(k) with company match
• Multiple healthcare options including company paid plan (medical, dental, vision)
• Paid time off + holidays
• Company-paid short-term, long-term disability & life insurance

About Us

Become our next millionaire. Alliance Material Handling is a 100% employee-owned company where every team member shares in the success they help create. We believe in rewarding hard work with real financial opportunity and long-term career growth.