Technology touches virtually every part of the prestige beauty experience. Our technologists deliver breakthrough solutions that provide global consumers with seamless, innovative and aspirational experiences across mobile, online or in-store. Technology also fuels growth and agility throughout our business by powering our factories, informing our newest products and streamlining the way our employees work.
Working Here
Prestige beauty is an exciting, competitive and dynamic industry that is fueled by technology. We are dedicated to fostering an environment where our employees can thrive and are valued, challenged, and rewarded for their dedication and commitment to excellence.
We fuse the best of the beauty world with the best of the tech world to foster a unique culture that enables our world-class technology talent to succeed, grow and build future careers with The Estée Lauder Companies. We embrace the challenges of leading at the intersection of tech and beauty and our competitive nature is a powerful source of motivation. We prioritize employee wellness, recognition and development and our passion for giving back unites us.
Giving Back:
Our company’s long-term success is closely tied to the vitality of the communities where we have a presence. We are dedicated to being active and respectful citizens, and our tech team engages in philanthropic and employee volunteer efforts to enhance the communities we touch.
Every October, ELC rallies the global tech community to participate in Tech Day of Pink to raise awareness of this disease and funds to support the Breast Cancer Research Foundation® (BCRF). This effort supports ELC’s Breast Cancer Campaign – our largest corporate philanthropic initiative with a mission to create a breast cancer-free world.
Volunteerism is also in the tech team’s DNA. Through our annual IT Day of Service and Summer of Service, hundreds of IT employees around the world join their family members and our strategic partners to volunteer their time and talents to support a variety of nonprofit organizations.
Employee Recognition:
Our IT team is dedicated to recognizing the contributions of our employees throughout the year. Annually, top tech talent at the company is celebrated at The Estée Lauder Information Technology Excellence (ELITE) Awards. The ELITE Awards honor the individuals and teams who exemplify ELC’s heritage of high-performance, innovation and family values, and who embody the characteristics, behaviors, actions and spirit that reflect the IT organization we aspire to be.
Inclusion & Diversity:
We are committed to promoting and maintaining an inclusive culture. No one person, group or culture has all the knowledge, skills or information necessary for success in our business. We believe that diverse backgrounds, experiences and perspectives result in greater innovation and better problem-solving across our organization.
ELC believes its employee population should reflect its consumers, helping the company gain insights and a better understanding of consumer aspirations. ELC has also made it a priority to support women in tech by sponsoring programs such as the Grace Hopper Celebration, a gathering of more than 25,000 female technologist from around the world and the Lower East Side Girls Club, a community center that offers a safe haven with programs in the arts, sciences, leadership, entrepreneurship, and wellness for girls in middle and high school.
Long Island City Tech Hub:
Our Long Island City Technology Hub is based in the heart of New York’s emerging tech epicenter. Our Tech Hub is a cutting-edge space that combines high-tech equipment with modern, collaborative design spaces to drive partnership throughout the IT organization and across the entire company. Our offices offer numerous physical team spaces, including gaming spaces and community lounges, to spark ideas and creativity. Built-in amenities such as a free gym, a subsidized cafeteria and a rooftop deck help to elevate the employee experience. This space is really about a new way of working through co-creation.
To ensure proper work-life balance, this office also offers an IT Flex program that allows employees to work from home and maintain their own working hours on a regular basis.
Our people are our greatest asset, and at The Estée Lauder Companies, we believe no one person, group or culture has all the knowledge, skills or information necessary for success in our business. We believe that diverse backgrounds, experiences and perspectives result in greater innovation and better problem-solving across our organization.
Notes from Michael W. Smith, Chief Information Officer:
When a company has innovation in its DNA, it’s a great place for technology to thrive. This reality definitely influenced my decision to join The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) last year as Chief Information Officer. It was clear to me that this was a consumer-obsessed organization, where technological advancements would be on very fertile ground. The company’s path to success — from the very first products that Mrs. Estée Lauder created, to how she took her products to market; from the company’s impressive R&D track record, to its early entry into online retail — excited me about the potential for its future. Read more.
We’re leveraging technology innovations to help us continue to grow across geographies, categories, channels and brands. We consistently leverage data analytics to explore and anticipate industry and customer shifts and are constantly innovating to enable and grow the business.
Global influencer @gloriaNBR experiments with Clinical Reality at the Clinique #Skinnovation event in September 2019
Clinique Clinical Reality™
Clinique’s Clinical Reality™ tool combines the latest in augmented reality with 50 years of dermatologist-driven expertise to provide consumers around the world with personalized product recommendations in just a few minutes. Our ELC teams collaborated with our cutting-edge partners to develop and deploy this breakthrough technology that virtually analyzes consumers’ skin to help them better understand their top concerns. Clinical Reality™ helps elevate the high-touch shopping experience while significantly driving sales growth. Our technologists working on this exciting project require expertise in areas including UI/UX design, functionality/module prioritization, testing, training and more.
A participant of the 2019 ELC Hackathon outlines a plan for her team
ELC Hackathon
Every year, the technology team hosts an ELC Hackathon to bring innovative technology minds from around the world together to help shape tomorrow’s beauty experience through hours of innovating, designing and coding. This event was created in 2018 to showcase ELC’s commitment to innovation, spirited IT culture and dedication to fostering a creative work environment for tech talent, while ultimately generating new ideas to further the company’s technology efforts. Read more about our 2018 and 2019 events.
The entrance to a M∙A∙C store in China that leverages differentiated retail marketing technology to connect with consumers
Case Study: MAC China Store
To provide an enhanced customer experience for the golden Gen Z consumer, our IT team used differentiated retail marketing to seamlessly communicate and converse with digitally-savvy Gen Z consumers, deliver extra in-store and online experiences via WeChat technology and provide real-time influencer recommendations in-store via social media at our MAC China Store. This mobile-first store uses a WeChat Mini Program for service booking, event reservation, ratings and review and self-service payments, features touch screens that integrates social platforms, provides interactive touch-tables to show products information, offers 3D customized printing and virtual try-ons with payments functionality.
We fuse the best of the beauty world with the best of the tech world to foster a unique culture that enables our world-class technology talent to succeed, grow and build future careers with The Estée Lauder Companies. We embrace the challenges of leading at the intersection of tech and beauty and our competitive nature is a powerful source of motivation. We prioritize employee wellness, recognition and development and our passion for giving back unites us.
Giving Back:
Our company’s long-term success is closely tied to the vitality of the communities where we have a presence. We are dedicated to being active and respectful citizens, and our tech team engages in philanthropic and employee volunteer efforts to enhance the communities we touch.
Every October, ELC rallies the global tech community to participate in Tech Day of Pink to raise awareness of this disease and funds to support the Breast Cancer Research Foundation® (BCRF). This effort supports ELC’s Breast Cancer Campaign – our largest corporate philanthropic initiative with a mission to create a breast cancer-free world.
Volunteerism is also in the tech team’s DNA. Through our annual IT Day of Service and Summer of Service, hundreds of IT employees around the world join their family members and our strategic partners to volunteer their time and talents to support a variety of nonprofit organizations.
Employee Recognition:
Our IT team is dedicated to recognizing the contributions of our employees throughout the year. Annually, top tech talent at the company is celebrated at The Estée Lauder Information Technology Excellence (ELITE) Awards. The ELITE Awards honor the individuals and teams who exemplify ELC’s heritage of high-performance, innovation and family values, and who embody the characteristics, behaviors, actions and spirit that reflect the IT organization we aspire to be.
Inclusion & Diversity:
We are committed to promoting and maintaining an inclusive culture. No one person, group or culture has all the knowledge, skills or information necessary for success in our business. We believe that diverse backgrounds, experiences and perspectives result in greater innovation and better problem-solving across our organization.
ELC believes its employee population should reflect its consumers, helping the company gain insights and a better understanding of consumer aspirations. ELC has also made it a priority to support women in tech by sponsoring programs such as the Grace Hopper Celebration, a gathering of more than 25,000 female technologist from around the world and the Lower East Side Girls Club, a community center that offers a safe haven with programs in the arts, sciences, leadership, entrepreneurship, and wellness for girls in middle and high school.
Long Island City Tech Hub:
Our Long Island City Technology Hub is based in the heart of New York’s emerging tech epicenter. Our Tech Hub is a cutting-edge space that combines high-tech equipment with modern, collaborative design spaces to drive partnership throughout the IT organization and across the entire company. Our offices offer numerous physical team spaces, including gaming spaces and community lounges, to spark ideas and creativity. Built-in amenities such as a free gym, a subsidized cafeteria and a rooftop deck help to elevate the employee experience. This space is really about a new way of working through co-creation.
To ensure proper work-life balance, this office also offers an IT Flex program that allows employees to work from home and maintain their own working hours on a regular basis.
Our people are our greatest asset, and at The Estée Lauder Companies, we believe no one person, group or culture has all the knowledge, skills or information necessary for success in our business. We believe that diverse backgrounds, experiences and perspectives result in greater innovation and better problem-solving across our organization.
Notes from Michael W. Smith, Chief Information Officer:
When a company has innovation in its DNA, it’s a great place for technology to thrive. This reality definitely influenced my decision to join The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) last year as Chief Information Officer. It was clear to me that this was a consumer-obsessed organization, where technological advancements would be on very fertile ground. The company’s path to success — from the very first products that Mrs. Estée Lauder created, to how she took her products to market; from the company’s impressive R&D track record, to its early entry into online retail — excited me about the potential for its future. Read more.
We’re leveraging technology innovations to help us continue to grow across geographies, categories, channels and brands. We consistently leverage data analytics to explore and anticipate industry and customer shifts and are constantly innovating to enable and grow the business.
Global influencer @gloriaNBR experiments with Clinical Reality at the Clinique #Skinnovation event in September 2019
Clinique Clinical Reality™
Clinique’s Clinical Reality™ tool combines the latest in augmented reality with 50 years of dermatologist-driven expertise to provide consumers around the world with personalized product recommendations in just a few minutes. Our ELC teams collaborated with our cutting-edge partners to develop and deploy this breakthrough technology that virtually analyzes consumers’ skin to help them better understand their top concerns. Clinical Reality™ helps elevate the high-touch shopping experience while significantly driving sales growth. Our technologists working on this exciting project require expertise in areas including UI/UX design, functionality/module prioritization, testing, training and more.
A participant of the 2019 ELC Hackathon outlines a plan for her team
ELC Hackathon
Every year, the technology team hosts an ELC Hackathon to bring innovative technology minds from around the world together to help shape tomorrow’s beauty experience through hours of innovating, designing and coding. This event was created in 2018 to showcase ELC’s commitment to innovation, spirited IT culture and dedication to fostering a creative work environment for tech talent, while ultimately generating new ideas to further the company’s technology efforts. Read more about our 2018 and 2019 events.
The entrance to a M∙A∙C store in China that leverages differentiated retail marketing technology to connect with consumers
Case Study: MAC China Store
To provide an enhanced customer experience for the golden Gen Z consumer, our IT team used differentiated retail marketing to seamlessly communicate and converse with digitally-savvy Gen Z consumers, deliver extra in-store and online experiences via WeChat technology and provide real-time influencer recommendations in-store via social media at our MAC China Store. This mobile-first store uses a WeChat Mini Program for service booking, event reservation, ratings and review and self-service payments, features touch screens that integrates social platforms, provides interactive touch-tables to show products information, offers 3D customized printing and virtual try-ons with payments functionality.
