Chad Holdridge
Marlton, NJ · chad.holdridge@me.com · linkedin.com/in/chadholdridge · holdridge.dev
Summary
Strategy and customer leader who turns retail technology pilots into enterprise expansions. Bridges Fortune 500 grocery and convenience customers with engineering teams at Focal Systems and SymphonyAI — translating store-level realities into product strategy, building the analytics that make ROI defensible to retail executives, and shaping pilot scope through to expansion. Lost sales methodology and multi-customer analytics platform identify $2M+ annually in recoverable revenue across pilot locations. 25 years of retail operations leadership before that, including Wegmans store director track ($120M annual revenue, 20 departments, 500+ people) — operator authenticity that grounds every customer conversation. Hands-on with the data, the executive narrative, and the platform decisions that resource-lean strategy work demands.
Experience
- Convert pilots into enterprise expansions across Fortune 500 grocery and convenience retailers by aligning customer strategy, success metrics, and executive storytelling
- Lost sales methodology and multi-customer analytics platform identify $2M+ annually in recoverable revenue across pilot locations — a value framework that didn’t exist before
- Designed config-driven multi-tenant data model (YAML field mapping) — onboard new retailers through configuration rather than engineering cycles
- Partner with Value Engineering on ROI storytelling for retail executives; present technical outcomes and system health that drive strategic expansion conversations
- Lead hybrid team of Solutions Engineers and AI/Data contributors across Product, Engineering, and Data Science — architecture decisions, onboarding strategy, cross-functional delivery
- Automated the customer reporting pipeline end-to-end — daily ETL through executive deliverables — eliminating manual data operations
- Co-led launch of Ada-Order (AI forecasting product) alongside Data Science; served as SME and customer proxy to guide model validation, use case scoping, and product integration roadmap
- Automated reporting workflows using Python and SQL, reducing turnaround by 40% and increasing insight into AI model reliability for executive decision-making
- Introduced ‘Planogram Scan-in’ product feature for FocalOS; partnered with Product and Design to define functionality enabling retailers to re-train AI models in-field
- Managed offshore partner teams under Head of Deep Learning: workload planning, SOPs, QA feedback loops, and training data delivery for AI/ML pipelines
- Key Voice of Customer in product design meetings, shaping roadmap priorities based on pilot feedback across enterprise accounts
- Collaborated cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, and Data Science to design AI-powered forecasting, replenishment, and on-shelf availability tools
- Delivered $400K in cost savings through process optimization, support structure redesign, and SOX-compliant inventory/cash management
- Led team of Inventory Managers and Analysts; partnered with IT, Compliance, and Procurement on system alignment and ERP integration
- Directed retail operations across $120M annual revenue — 20 departments, 500+ people, P&L accountability, shelf and replenishment operations across perishable and center-store
- Introduced Lean/CI tools that improved KPIs, shrink performance, and operational consistency across multiple store openings and resets
- Built and mentored high-performing teams through structured hiring, coaching, and performance management across multiple store openings
- Managed vendor relationships and labor planning at scale, including 5 store openings in varying leadership capacities
Technical Portfolio
Single config-driven platform serving 6+ grocery and convenience retailers (US + UK). Lost sales methodology, on-shelf availability tracking, planogram compliance metrics, and weekly executive reporting — turning raw computer vision data into the value frameworks retail executives use to fund expansion. Currently identifying $2M+ annually in recoverable revenue across pilot stores.
Governance dashboard for an autonomous agent fleet — audit trail with hash-chain verification, decision tracking, and health scoring across multiple agent types and project spokes. Built to make AI system behavior legible to operators and stakeholders — the same transparency layer a retail customer would need across a deployed shelf-intelligence fleet.
Multi-tenant configure-price-quote SaaS for industrial distribution. Quote builder, hierarchical product catalog, approval workflows, e-signatures, customer portal, role-based access, and concurrent-session management for shared-login customer environments. Built end-to-end to a target customer's specification for a planned 100-reseller deployment; commercial agreement pending.
Prototype built to prove that AI tooling could bridge the gap between product and engineering at scale. Architected 17-domain agent framework spec, built routing layer, data pipeline, and first operational agent. Demo'd working prototype to executive leadership.
Hub-and-spoke system coordinating typed AI agent roles across project spokes. Production RAG pipeline with hybrid retrieval and reranking, hook enforcement system for protocol compliance, and automated knowledge capture with nightly intelligence pipeline.
Technical Toolkit
Claude · Claude Code · Cursor · Python · SQL · n8n · Playwright · Flask · Grafana
React · Next.js · TypeScript · Tailwind CSS · Firebase · Docker · Electron · Git
LlamaIndex · RAG Pipelines · Chart.js · PostgreSQL · Firestore · FastAPI
Jira · Figma · Confluence · Slack · ClickUp · Google Workspace