Lead Developer / Technical Architect, eCommerce (Shelton)

About the Role

Excelligence Learning Corporation is transforming its digital commerce ecosystem, replatforming from SAP Commerce Cloud (Hybris) to a modern, composable commerce architecture. We are seeking a Lead Developer / Technical Architect, eCommerce to provide hands-on technical leadership throughout this transformation and take ownership of the platform following implementation.

This is a highly visible, hands-on leadership role for someone who enjoys both designing architecture and building solutions . You will establish technical direction, contribute code, review development work, guide engineering standards, and help drive delivery from implementation through production.

During the replatform, you will serve as Excelligence's senior technical resource alongside our implementation partner, with significant influence and design authority over the solutions being built. Following go-live, you will take technical ownership of the platform and lead its continued evolution, performance, reliability, and scalability.

Our ecommerce businesses serve both institutional B2B customers—including schools, school districts, and early childhood programs—and direct-to-consumer customers . B2B commerce represents the larger and more complex portion of our business, making capabilities such as punchout, quoting, purchase orders, contract pricing, tax exemptions, approval workflows, and account hierarchies critical to our architecture.

What You'll Do

Architecture & Engineering Leadership

• Own the end-to-end technical architecture across the storefront, commerce APIs, CMS, search, PIM, ERP, OMS, payments, tax, and related systems.
• Serve as the technical design authority for the implementation, reviewing and challenging architecture, technical approaches, and deliverables from implementation partners.
• Own the React-based storefront architecture, including rendering strategy, caching, scalability, and performance.
• Define integration architecture across ERP, PIM, OMS, marketing, and other enterprise systems, including data contracts, synchronization patterns, APIs, events, and failure handling.
• Contribute directly to development and remain hands-on with code, architecture, troubleshooting, and technical problem-solving.
• Lead technical planning for data migration and cutover, including product catalogs, customer accounts, order history, content, SEO redirects, and release sequencing.
• Establish engineering standards for code reviews, automated testing, CI/CD, observability, environment management, security, and releases.
• Document key architectural decisions, technical standards, and trade-offs.

Platform Ownership & Operations

• Own the stability, scalability, security, and performance of the ecommerce platform in production.
• Establish incident-response practices, including monitoring, runbooks, escalation procedures, root-cause analysis, and postmortems.
• Manage the technical relationship with commerce and technology vendors, including releases, roadmaps, upgrades, and escalations.
• Identify, prioritize, and manage technical debt.
• Drive continuous improvements in site speed, reliability, scalability, developer productivity, and overall customer experience.
• Ensure the platform is prepared for peak-volume periods and business-critical events.

Technical Delivery

• Lead the agile delivery process for the development team, including backlog refinement, sprint planning, estimation, standups, demos, and retrospectives.
• Break complex initiatives into incremental, demonstrable releases that deliver measurable business value.
• Partner closely with Product, Merchandising, Marketing, Operations, and other stakeholders to translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions.
• Provide leadership with clear and timely visibility into technical risks, dependencies, scope, and timelines.
• Manage technical delivery from systems integrators, agencies, vendors, and contract developers, ensuring their work meets Excelligence's engineering standards.
• Lead the transition from partner-led implementation to internal ownership through structured knowledge transfer, documentation, and operational readiness.

Team Leadership

• Provide technical leadership, coaching, and mentorship to a small development team.
• Help recruit and develop technical talent as the ecommerce organization grows.
• Establish development practices that encourage accountability, collaboration, quality, and continuous improvement.
• Build the documentation, processes, and runbooks necessary to operate the platform effectively without creating single-person dependencies.

What We're Looking For

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience designing, building, and shipping production web applications, including 3+ years in a Lead Developer, Principal Engineer, Technical Lead, or Architect capacity.
• Hands-on ecommerce experience supporting and owning a revenue-generating digital storefront in production.
• Direct experience with at least one enterprise or composable commerce platform such as VTEX, Kibo, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, SAP Commerce Cloud, commercetools, Shopify Plus, BigCommerce , or a comparable platform.
• Strong B2B ecommerce experience, including several of the following: punchout (cXML/OCI), quoting, purchase orders, contract/customer-specific pricing, account hierarchies, tax exemptions, and approval workflows .
• Strong hands-on experience with React and TypeScript , including production experience with a server-rendered React framework such as Next.js, Remix, or an equivalent framework.
• Strong understanding of headless and API-first architectures , including REST, GraphQL, authentication/token management, edge/CDN caching, webhooks, and event-driven integrations.
• Experience leading an agile development process with direct accountability for technical delivery.
• Experience owning the operational health of a production ecommerce environment, including uptime, performance, incident response, and peak-season readiness.
• Experience completing at least one significant ecommerce platform migration or replatforming initiative .
• Ability to communicate complex architecture, technical decisions, risks, and trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with SAP Commerce Cloud (Hybris) or migrating from a legacy monolithic commerce platform to a composable/headless architecture.
• Experience taking ownership of a platform initially developed by an implementation partner or systems integrator.
• Experience integrating commerce platforms with ERP, OMS, PIM, and DAM systems .
• Experience with headless CMS platforms such as Contentful, Contentstack, Storyblok, or Sanity .
• Experience with composable search platforms such as Algolia, Constructor, Bloomreach , or platform-native search technologies.
• Knowledge of cloud infrastructure and DevOps practices, including containers, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, monitoring, and observability.
• Experience supporting large or complex product catalogs and executing SEO-sensitive ecommerce migrations.
• Knowledge of WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards and modern front-end performance optimization.
• Experience within education, B2B distribution, multi-brand retail, or another complex ecommerce environment .

Why Join Excelligence?

At Excelligence, you'll be part of a mission-driven organization dedicated to supporting educators and helping children succeed. You'll have the opportunity to make a meaningful impact on our logistics and supply chain operations while working alongside talented professionals in a collaborative and growth-oriented environment.

Equal Employment Opportunity

Excelligence Learning Corporation is an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) Employer. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all employees, applicants, and other covered persons without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, pregnancy, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, ancestry, ethnicity, citizenship status, genetic information, military or veteran status, age, physical or mental disability, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law.