Job Summary
The Lead Software Engineer - Retail Systems will lead the design, development, and delivery of enterprise retail store platforms supporting Point of Sale (POS), omnichannel order fulfillment, inventory management, and international store operations. This is a hands-on technical leadership role requiring deep expertise in retail systems, Java/Spring Boot, AWS, microservices, and distributed architectures. The ideal candidate will drive technical excellence while collaborating with business stakeholders, product teams, and retail operations to deliver scalable, reliable, and secure store solutions.

Key Responsibilities
• Lead the technical design, architecture, and implementation of retail store systems, including POS, OMNI order fulfillment, inventory receiving, and store operations.
• Design, develop, and maintain scalable backend services using Java, Spring Boot, Python, and Node.js.
• Develop and support customer-facing applications using React.
• Translate business and operational requirements into scalable, resilient, and maintainable technical solutions.
• Establish architecture standards, coding guidelines, and engineering best practices.
• Design and implement integrations with Shopify, ERP, OMS, loyalty platforms, payment systems, and third-party applications.
• Support international retail expansion by implementing localization, regional compliance, taxation, and country-specific operational requirements.
• Design systems that support physical retail environments, including POS hardware, peripherals, and intermittent network connectivity.
• Collaborate with Retail Operations, Product Management, store managers, and business stakeholders to improve store operations and customer experience.
• Design and implement event-driven architectures using Kafka.
• Build distributed systems utilizing idempotency, retry mechanisms, eventual consistency, and transactional processing patterns.
• Define and maintain Service Level Objectives (SLOs), improve service reliability, reduce incident rates, and minimize Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR).
• Implement monitoring, logging, alerting, and observability using Splunk, New Relic, or similar platforms.
• Participate in production support, on-call rotations, incident response, root cause analysis, and continuous service improvements.
• Plan and support critical retail events, including promotions, holidays, and new store launches.
• Drive CI/CD, release management, automated testing, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) practices.
• Ensure data accuracy, auditability, reconciliation, and consistency across inventory, order management, and financial systems.
• Implement security controls, access management, and compliance standards for store-facing applications.
• Mentor engineers through technical leadership, architecture guidance, code reviews, and design discussions.

Required Qualifications
• 7+ years of software engineering experience with demonstrated technical leadership.
• Strong experience designing and delivering retail store systems.
• Hands-on experience with Point of Sale (POS), OMNI order fulfillment, inventory receiving, and retail operations.
• Strong proficiency in Java and Spring Boot.
• Experience developing microservices-based applications.
• Experience with Python and Node.js development.
• Experience building frontend applications using React.
• Hands-on experience integrating with Shopify and enterprise retail platforms.
• Strong experience with relational databases, including Oracle and MySQL.
• Experience with NoSQL databases such as DynamoDB.
• Strong experience designing event-driven architectures using Kafka.
• Deep understanding of distributed systems, including retries, idempotency, eventual consistency, and transactional processing.
• Experience with monitoring and observability tools such as Splunk and New Relic.
• Experience supporting production systems, incident management, and operational excellence.
• Experience with Maven, Ant, YAML, and GitHub.
• Hands-on experience with Docker and Kubernetes.
• Experience deploying and managing applications on AWS.
• Experience with AWS SAM and Terraform.
• Understanding of payment processing, settlement, taxation, and retail compliance.
• Experience supporting omnichannel retail workflows, including Ship-from-Store, BOPIS, split shipments, cancellations, returns, and inventory fulfillment.
• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills.
• Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Ability to thrive in fast-paced retail environments and drive technical ownership.

Preferred Qualifications
• Experience supporting international retail implementations and country-specific compliance requirements.
• Experience leading large-scale retail modernization initiatives.
• Experience with enterprise architecture, DevOps automation, and cloud-native application development.
• Strong understanding of retail operational processes and omnichannel commerce best practices.