Key Responsibilities

1. Engineering & Architecture Leadership

- Lead the design, development and modernization of enterprise-scale applications and distributed services.

- Define and drive scalable, resilient and maintainable application architectures.

- Establish engineering standards covering coding practices, design principles, performance, security, observability and reliability.

- Review and challenge solution architecture and technical designs proposed by internal and partner teams.

- Drive adoption of modern engineering practices across the technology landscape.

2. Hands-on Application Engineering

- Design and develop backend services using Java, Spring Boot, Python and/or Node.js.

- Build scalable microservices and distributed services for high-volume retail workloads.

- Develop and maintain RESTful APIs and API-driven integrations.

- Design reusable services and components following modular and domain-oriented architecture principles.

- Troubleshoot complex application, integration and performance issues and provide hands-on technical guidance to engineering teams.

3. Microservices & Distributed Systems

- Design and implement microservices-based architectures.

- Define service boundaries, communication patterns, resiliency and fault-tolerance mechanisms.

- Design systems for scalability, high availability and performance.

- Apply appropriate patterns for synchronous and asynchronous communication.

- Drive modernization of legacy applications and monolithic systems into scalable distributed services.

4. Event-Driven Architecture & Integration

- Design and implement event-driven architectures using messaging and streaming technologies.

- Develop asynchronous integrations using platforms such as Kafka, RabbitMQ, Azure Service Bus, IBM MQ or equivalent.

- Design enterprise integrations across OMS, WMS, TMS, SAP ERP, Payments, CRM, Loyalty, Store Systems, Carriers and other third-party platforms.

- Ensure reliable message processing, error handling, retry mechanisms, idempotency and integration observability.

5. Cloud-Native Engineering

- Design and build cloud-native applications and distributed services on Azure or equivalent cloud platforms.

- Drive containerization using Docker and Kubernetes.

- Leverage cloud-native services for compute, messaging, storage, API management, monitoring and integration.

- Drive application scalability, resilience, performance and cost optimization.

- Promote infrastructure and deployment automation through CI/CD and DevSecOps practices.

6. Domain Platform Ownership

Provide technical ownership and engineering leadership for one or more retail/supply-chain platforms based on the candidate's area of expertise, such as:

- IBM Sterling OMS - order orchestration, fulfilment, inventory, returns and omnichannel order management.

- Blue Yonder WMS - warehouse execution, inventory, replenishment, picking, packing and dispatch.

- TMS / Transportation Platforms - transportation planning, carrier integration, shipment execution and last-mile processes.

The candidate is not expected to have deep expertise across all three platforms. Strong hands-on expertise in one domain, together with the ability to understand and integrate with adjacent platforms is expected.

7. Data & Database Engineering

- Strong SQL skills for application development, troubleshooting and data analysis.

- Design efficient data access patterns and database interactions.

- Diagnose data inconsistencies and performance issues across distributed applications.

- Work with relational and NoSQL databases where appropriate.

- Ensure data integrity, consistency and appropriate transaction management across distributed systems.

8. Production Engineering & Reliability

- Own production stability and technical health of critical applications and platforms.

- Lead RCA and resolution of critical incidents.

- Improve application observability through monitoring, logging, tracing and alerting.

- Establish performance, availability and reliability engineering practices.

- Drive proactive identification and resolution of technical debt and recurring production issues.

9. Engineering Delivery & Vendor Management

- Lead implementation and technology partners delivering engineering solutions.

- Own technical governance, delivery quality and engineering standards across partner teams.

- Review partner architecture, code quality, technical approaches and implementation plans.

- Drive SLA adherence, delivery timelines and quality metrics.

- Provide technical direction to partner teams while retaining hands-on ownership of critical engineering decisions.

10. Stakeholder Management

Work closely with:

- Product and Business teams

- Supply Chain and Warehouse Operations

- Store Operations

- ERP / SAP teams

- Enterprise Architecture

- Infrastructure / Cloud

- Information Security

- Data & Analytics

- Implementation partners

Translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions and communicate complex technical decisions effectively to senior stakeholders.