Director Software Engineering

Overview

The Senior Software Engineering Manager leads engineering teams to deliver scalable, reliable, and AI-powered platforms that support retail store operations, associate productivity, and customer experience .

This role partners closely with Product and Business teams to translate product requirements into high-quality engineering solutions , while ensuring strong execution, operational excellence, and system reliability across both new and existing platforms.

Essential Functions

Engineering Delivery & Execution

• Lead end-to-end engineering execution for multiple concurrent initiatives
• Translate product and business requirements into technical designs and deliverables
• Drive predictable, high-quality delivery across teams
• Ensure adherence to:
• Code quality standards
• Testing strategies
• CI/CD pipelines
• DevOps practices
• Conduct system design reviews to ensure scalability and alignment with architecture

Product & Business Partnership (Not Ownership)

• Partner with Product and Business teams to:
• Understand customer and operational needs
• Refine problem statements
• Influence technical solutions
• Provide visibility into:
• Scope
• Effort
• Trade-offs
• Resource needs
• Support prioritization decisions based on:
• Business value
• Technical feasibility
• Delivery timelines

AI & Retail Innovation

• Build and enable AI-driven applications and automation features
• Work with:
• Generative AI
• AI agents
• Machine learning components
• Contribute to solutions for:
• Store operations optimization
• Inventory intelligence
• Associate productivity tools
• Promote use of:
• AI-assisted development tools
• Intelligent automation frameworks

Product Support & Operational Excellence (Build + Run)

• Ensure systems are production-ready and highly reliable
• Lead engineering teams in:
• Platform support
• Incident management
• Root cause analysis (RCA)
• Define and track:
• System reliability metrics
• Performance benchmarks
• Delivery KPIs (velocity, cycle time, defect rates)
• Improve system resilience through:
• Monitoring and alerting
• Observability practices
• Continuous improvement

Team Leadership & People Management

• Lead and grow a team of software engineers and technical leads
• Drive:
• Hiring
• Onboarding
• Mentorship
• Performance management
• Foster a culture of:
• Accountability
• Innovation
• Continuous learning
• Enable teams through:
• Clear delegation
• Documentation
• Tooling and development frameworks

Agile & Execution Excellence

• Champion Agile/Lean methodologies
• Facilitate:
• Sprint planning
• Stand-ups
• Retrospectives
• Release management
• Coordinate across teams through:
• Scrum-of-scrums
• Cross-team planning

Platform & Cost Optimization

• Drive efficiency through:
• Automation
• Tooling improvements
• Process optimization
• Lead cost optimization efforts :
• Cloud cost management
• Infrastructure efficiency
• Licensing optimization

Governance & Compliance

• Ensure adherence to:
• Security standards
• Compliance requirements (e.g., SOX)
• Data governance practices

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities and Physical Requirements

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or equivalent
• 12+ years of software development experience
• 3+ years in engineering leadership roles
• Experience leading teams of 8+ engineers
• Strong expertise in:
• Microservices architecture
• Data structures & algorithms
• Cloud platforms
• Distributed systems
• Hands-on experience with:
• Generative AI / AI-enabled development
• CI/CD tools (Git, Maven, Jenkins)
• Containerization (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Messaging systems (Kafka)

Core Competencies

• Customer Focus
• Communication
• Driving for Results
• Coaching and Developing Others
• Leading Change

Benefits

In addition to a rewarding career, Sprouts offers a comprehensive program to help support you and your family. These programs include:

• Competitive pay
• Sick time plan that you can use to support you or your immediate families health
• Vacation accrual plan
• Opportunities for career growth
• 15% discount for you and one other family member in your household on all purchases made at Sprouts
• Flexible schedules
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
• 401(K) Retirement savings plan with a generous company match
• Company paid life insurance
• Contests and appreciation events throughout the year full of prizes, food and fun!

Eligibility requirements may apply for the following benefits:

• Bonus based on company and/or individual performance
• Affordable benefit coverage, including medical, dental and vision
• Health Savings Account with company match
• Pre-tax Flexible Spending Accounts for healthcare and dependent care
• Company paid short-term disability coverage
• Paid parental leave for both mothers and fathers
• Paid holidays

Get Paid Every Day!

Sprouts Farmers Market offers DailyPay - if you're hired as an eligible employee, you'll be able to transfer the money you've already earned at no extra cost, and get it the next business day, for free . We offer DailyPay so you don't have to wait for payday to access the money you've already worked for. With DailyPay, you can see how much you've made every day and you can transfer your money any time before payday.

You can learn more by visiting

Why Sprouts

Grow with us!

If you have a passion for inspiring people and a flair for fresh food, consider applying for a job at Sprouts! With a focus on customer service, our neighborhood grocery stores offer high-quality, farm fresh produce, natural meats, plenty of scoop-your-own bulk goods and much more in a fun, friendly, old-fashioned farmer's market setting. Come grow your career in healthy living with a fast-paced, rapidly growing company and teams that pride themselves on empowering others along their journey.

The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of the work being performed by people assigned to this work. This is not an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, and requirements. Sprouts' management reserves the right to amend and change duties, responsibilities, and requirements to meet business and organizational needs as necessary.

Sprouts will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of the Fair Chance in Hiring Ordinance.

California Residents: We collect information in accordance with California law, please see here for more information.