Engineering Manager- Merchandising Technology

The Engineering Manager - Merchandising Technology owns the architecture, engineering roadmap, integrations, delivery, and operational health of the MerchTech portfolio. This role provides technical leadership across pricing, promotions, assortment and space planning, vendor management, product lifecycle management, cost modeling, and related capabilities.

You will partner with Product Management, Enterprise Architecture, Infrastructure, Security, Data, business teams, and vendors to deliver scalable, secure, and reliable solutions while building the foundation for future AI-enabled merchandising capabilities.

Key Responsibilities:

Architecture and Engineering Strategy

• Own the MerchTech architecture and engineering roadmap.
• Translate product strategies into scalable technical designs and delivery plans.
• Lead solution architecture, Architecture Review Board (ARB) submissions, and technical design reviews.
• Ensure SaaS solutions comply with enterprise architecture, integration, security, data, and operational standards.
• Drive modernization, API strategy, cloud adoption, automation, observability, and DevOps practices.
• Identify and address technical debt, platform risks, and end-of-life technologies.

Platform and Integration Ownership

• Serve as the primary engineering owner for MerchTech platforms.
• Own end-to-end integrations across ERP, middleware, data platforms, and third-party applications.
• Establish integration standards, interface ownership, monitoring, reconciliation, and support processes.
• Ensure solutions meet performance, security, availability, resiliency, and disaster-recovery requirements.
• Maintain architecture diagrams, integration inventories, and operational documentation.

Delivery and Vendor Management

• Partner with Product Management to define technical scope, dependencies, estimates, and delivery plans.
• Lead technical discovery, design, development, testing, deployment, and transition to support.
• Manage internal and vendor engineering resources, capacity, commitments, quality, and technical risks.
• Lead vendor technical evaluations and roadmap discussions.
• Hold vendors accountable for solution quality, documentation, knowledge transfer, and contractual deliverables.
• Build internal expertise and reusable technical assets to reduce vendor dependency.

Operations and Reliability

• Own production support, platform reliability, release planning, incident management, and operational health.
• Establish service levels, monitoring, alerting, escalation processes, and performance metrics.
• Lead major-incident response, root-cause analysis, and corrective actions.
• Improve release quality through CI/CD, automated testing, change controls, and deployment standards.
• Maintain lifecycle, business-continuity, and disaster-recovery plans for critical platforms.

Team and Capability Development

• Build and develop a high-performing MerchTech engineering team.
• Establish clear roles, engineering standards, and performance expectations.
• Coach team members and create meaningful development opportunities.
• Manage resource and capacity planning against portfolio priorities.
• Build the technical foundation for AI/ML, advanced analytics, and intelligent automation.

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years of experience in software engineering, enterprise applications, solution architecture, or systems integration.
• 3+ years of experience leading engineering teams or complex technical programs.
• Experience implementing, integrating, and supporting enterprise SaaS applications.
• Strong knowledge of APIs, middleware, cloud platforms, integration patterns, security, data architecture, and DevOps.
• Experience with architecture governance, production support, incident management, and release management.
• Demonstrated success managing vendors, delivery commitments, technical risks, and competing priorities.
• Strong communication and stakeholder-management skills across business, technology, and executive audiences.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with retail merchandising processes, including pricing, promotions, assortment, space planning, vendor management, product lifecycle management, or merchandise financial planning.
• Experience configuring and integrating retail platform solutions such as Blue Yonder, o9, RELEX, SymphonyAI, or SAP.
• Experience integrating merchandising applications with SAP and cloud-based data platforms.
• Familiarity with retail product, vendor, cost, location, pricing, and promotional data.
• Experience modernizing legacy platforms and implementing API-first, cloud-native, or event-driven architectures.
• Experience enabling AI/ML, advanced analytics, or decision-support solutions.