Role Summary:
We’re seeking a Senior Manager of Software Engineering to lead multiple engineering squads across the Merchandising and Pricing technology portfolio. This is a multi-squad leadership role accountable for end-to-end delivery, technical strategy, and team development across item lifecycle, catalog, pricing engines, promotions, and contract quoting capabilities serving Staples’ B2B and B2C channels.
This is a senior people leadership role (75% leadership, strategy, and stakeholder management; 25% hands-on technical depth) that combines portfolio ownership across multiple squads with the technical credibility to make architectural calls. You will manage Managers and senior individual contributors, own multi-quarter roadmap commitments, drive platform modernization to cloud-native event-driven architectures on Azure, and partner directly with US-based engineering, architecture, product, and business leadership across the portfolio.
e-Commerce or retail industry experience is required for this role. Merchandising and/or pricing domain background is strongly preferred. Candidates without hands-on leadership experience in an e-commerce, retail, or B2B commerce environment will not be considered.
Duties & Responsibilities
Portfolio Leadership & Team Development
Lead and develop multiple engineering squads (12–18 engineers total), including 2–3 Manager-level or senior IC direct reports who lead their own teams.
Drive performance management, leveling, succession planning, and career development; build the talent bench needed to scale GCC capability.
Set hiring strategy for the portfolio, lead senior-level interview panels, and shape onboarding for new engineers and leaders.
Establish the operating cadence — portfolio reviews, leadership 1:1s, skip-levels, and quarterly business reviews with US stakeholders.
Technical & Delivery Ownership
Own multi-quarter delivery commitments, roadmap planning, and capacity allocation across the portfolio in partnership with Product and US-based engineering leadership.
Set platform and architecture direction across the portfolio; partner with Enterprise Architecture on build-vs-buy decisions and vendor selection.
Sequence and drive platform modernization from legacy systems to cloud-native, API-first, event-driven architectures on Azure.
Champion engineering excellence — API standards, CI/CD, automated testing, observability, performance, and security — and set quality and reliability targets (SLOs, error budgets, incident response) that squads are held to.
Stakeholder & Executive Engagement
Build and maintain trusted relationships with US-based VP, Sr. Director, and Director peers across Engineering, Product, Architecture, and Business teams.
Communicate portfolio status, risks, and trade-offs to executive audiences through written narrative-style updates and structured executive reviews.
Represent GCC Chennai engineering in cross-functional governance forums, architecture review boards, and quarterly business planning.
AI-Native Engineering Culture
Establish and drive an AI-native SDLC culture across the portfolio — set expectations that every engineer leverages AI-assisted development tools (GitHub Copilot, AI code assistants, AI-driven testing, AI-augmented code review) as a standard practice and force multiplier.
Measure and report on AI-driven productivity, quality, and velocity impact across squads; surface and scale what works.
Requirements
Years of Experience
- 14+ years of software engineering experience with progressively increasing responsibility, with emphasis on Java, Spring Boot, microservices, and enterprise backend systems.
- 6+ years of hands-on experience in e-commerce, retail, or B2B commerce platform engineering (required). Merchandising and/or pricing domain experience strongly preferred.
- 5+ years of people management experience, including managing Managers or senior ICs, performance management, succession planning, and hiring across multiple squads.
- 4+ years of experience designing, building, and operating distributed, event-driven systems in cloud environments at enterprise scale.
- 3+ years of experience driving multi-quarter platform modernization or large-scale legacy migration programs.
Basic Qualifications
- e-Commerce or retail industry experience is required — candidates must have hands-on leadership experience in an e-commerce, retail, or B2B commerce organization.
- Proven multi-squad people leadership experience including managing Manager-level reports and senior ICs.
- Hands-on technical credibility in Java, Spring Boot, microservices, REST API design, and event-driven architectures.
- Strong knowledge of cloud platforms (Azure preferred; AWS or GCP acceptable) and cloud-native development practices.
- Experience with event-driven architectures using Kafka, Solace, Azure Event Hub, or equivalent.
- Solid understanding of relational databases (SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL) and NoSQL databases (Couchbase, Redis, MongoDB).
- Strong background in CI/CD, automated testing, DevOps practices, observability, and operational readiness.
- Demonstrated ability to lead distributed Agile/Scrum delivery and ship high-quality software on multi-quarter commitments.
- Strong written and verbal executive communication skills; ability to influence and align senior cross-functional stakeholders.
- AI-native SDLC mindset — proven ability to drive adoption and measure impact of AI-assisted development tools (GitHub Copilot, AI code assistants, AI-driven testing) across multiple squads.
Preferred Qualifications
- Hands-on background in merchandising and/or pricing platforms — item lifecycle and PIM (Stibo STEP, Informatica, Riversand), pricing engines, promotions adjudication, CPQ (PROS, Salesforce CPQ, Oracle CPQ), or marketplace optimization.
- Experience leading platform modernization from legacy systems (mainframe, monolith) to cloud-native, event-driven architectures.
- Familiarity with B2B pricing models: customer hierarchy pricing, volume tiers, contract pricing, and negotiated rate management.
- Experience integrating with third-party marketplaces (Amazon, Walmart, Target) and headless commerce platforms.
- Exposure to AI/ML applied to pricing optimization, content enrichment, classification, or promotional effectiveness.
- Experience operating in a GCC, captive offshore center, or multi-location engineering model.
- Track record of building engineering bench strength — promoting Managers, growing senior ICs, and scaling team capability.
