About the Role
The Office of AI at Gap Inc. is seeking a Sr. Manager, Strategy (AI Special Projects and Innovation) to enable responsible adoption of AI across all value streams and touchpoints. Reporting into the Office of AI, this role is designed to float across domains and lead special projects that intentionally cross journey boundaries, including horizontal capabilities and enterprise approaches such as platform building, governance, and agent security. Stores will be an owned focus area representing a large portion of the project portfolio, while the remaining work may span product, customer, and employee experiences, as well as distribution centers and transportation.
You will take high priority problems from intake through proof of concept delivery, define repeatable innovation frameworks, and partner with teams across the business and technology organization to scale what works. This role is an individual contributor today and may evolve to include people leadership as the portfolio grows.
What You'll Do
- Own a portfolio of AI special projects across value streams, often running five or more initiatives at a time, with clear outcomes, scope, milestones, and success measures.
- Lead proof of concept delivery from problem framing and discovery through build, test, launch, and measurable learning, then drive the path to scale with partner teams.
- Build and operationalize innovation frameworks that make experimentation repeatable, including intake, evaluation criteria, governance checkpoints, and decision making rhythms.
- Own stores as a focus area within the portfolio, shaping initiatives that improve frontline workflows, experience quality, and operational efficiency.
- Lead cross journey initiatives where value streams intersect, for example a customer facing product copywriting agent that improves content quality and speed while meeting brand and compliance standards.
- Partner with Security, Risk, Legal, and Technology leaders to define practical guardrails for AI agents and other AI enabled experiences, including control requirements, testing expectations, and monitoring needs.
- Drive horizontal capability work such as shared tooling, reusable components, observability and evaluation approaches, and governance mechanisms that reduce duplication and accelerate adoption.
Expand AI impact into distribution centers, transportation, and adjacent operational environments when relevant, partnering with supply chain and operations teams to design, pilot, and transition solutions.
Create executive ready narratives and decision materials that connect feasibility, risk posture, and business value to enable prioritization and sustained investment.
Who You Are
- 7 to 12 years of experience in technology strategy, innovation, product, or program delivery across multiple domains or equivalent experience.
- Demonstrated ability to deliver proofs of concept and translate learnings into scalable solutions through strong cross functional partnership.
- Practical fluency in modern AI capabilities, including agentic patterns, automation, and analytics, with the ability to evaluate feasibility, integration considerations, and tradeoffs.
- Strong judgment in responsible AI delivery, including governance, privacy, and security considerations, and a track record of enabling progress with clear guardrails.
- Ability to manage a multi workstream portfolio, drive decisions, and communicate clearly with both technical and non technical stakeholders.
- Ability to influence without authority, facilitate working sessions, and resolve dependencies across teams.
- Comfort working across stores, corporate teams, and operational environments such as distribution centers and transportation.
Preferred Qualifications (optional)
- Experience building enterprise platforms or shared services that support multiple value streams.
- Experience partnering closely with Security on requirements for AI systems, including identity and access, data handling, logging, monitoring, and incident readiness.
- Familiarity with retail operations, supply chain, or transportation workflows and the change management required to drive adoption.