Job Title

Technical Lead

Education

Bachelor's Degree

Location

Houston - Houston, TX 77032 US (Primary)
Philadelphia - Philadelphia, PA 19106 US

Career Level

Experienced (Non-Manager)

Category

Information Technology

Job Type

Permanent

Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced Technical Lead to join our growing, international development organization, based in either our Houston, TX or Philadelphia, PA office. This is a hands-on leadership role at the heart of our logistics software delivery. You will lead a development team building and evolving the platforms that power our global freight and supply chain operations - setting technical direction, mentoring engineers, and partnering with stakeholders across multiple regions and functions.

The ideal candidate is equally comfortable writing and reviewing code and steering a team. You will be expected to critically assess how software has been built in the past, modernize legacy frameworks and patterns, and establish new engineering foundations that enable agile, high-output delivery of features and functions. This position deliberately owns hard technical challenges and demands both strong engineering depth and the soft skills to navigate a complex, matrixed, global stakeholder environment.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Team Management

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of developers delivering logistics software, setting clear technical standards and fostering a culture of quality and accountability.
• Provide hands-on technical direction - architecture, design reviews, and code reviews - while remaining actively engaged in development.
• Plan and prioritize the team's work in an agile delivery model, balancing feature velocity with maintainability and technical debt reduction.
• Partner with product owners, business stakeholders, and other engineering leads to translate requirements into robust, scalable technical solutions.
• Coach and develop engineers through structured feedback, career growth planning, and knowledge-sharing that raises the capability of the whole team.
• Establish and track meaningful engineering metrics - delivery velocity, quality, and stability - and use them to drive continuous improvement.
• Manage capacity, estimation, and resourcing across FTE and vendor/contractor staff to meet commitments in a distributed delivery model.

Modernization & Engineering Excellence

• Critically review existing systems, frameworks, and patterns used in the past, and drive the transformation toward modern, maintainable architectures.
• Design and establish new frameworks, tooling, and standards that enable agile, high-output delivery of features and functions.
• Champion best practices across the full development lifecycle - design, coding, testing, debugging, deployment, and ongoing maintenance.
• Ensure adherence to sound change management, CI/CD, and implementation procedures across the team.
• Introduce and mature automated testing, code quality gates, and peer review practices to reduce defects and rework.
• Define and drive a pragmatic modernization roadmap that retires technical debt without disrupting business-critical operations.
• Evaluate and adopt new tools, frameworks, and AI-assisted development practices to accelerate output and elevate engineering quality.

Delivery & Stakeholder Navigation

• Own delivery of solutions end to end, from requirements gathering through production support and enhancement.
• Navigate and align a diverse set of global stakeholders - business, IT, vendors, and regional teams - responsible for outcomes across the organization.
• Provide technical support and guidance to applications during and after implementation, driving rapid, effective resolution of issues.
• Communicate technical trade-offs, risks, and timelines clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences, adapting the message to the seniority of the audience.
• Build strong working relationships across time zones and cultures, resolving competing priorities and keeping delivery on track in a matrixed environment.
• Act as an escalation point for complex production issues, coordinating cross-functional teams to restore service and prevent recurrence.

Exemption Type

Exempt (Salaried)

Job Requirements

Required Qualifications

• Proven experience as a Technical Lead, Lead Developer, or in a comparable role, managing and mentoring development teams.
• Strong hands-on proficiency in Java or PHP (proficiency in both is strongly preferred).
• Demonstrated experience managing development teams building logistics software.
• Solid understanding of modern software architecture, design patterns, and framework modernization.
• Experience designing and building RESTful APIs, integrations, and service-oriented or microservice architectures.
• Working knowledge of relational databases and SQL, with the ability to design efficient data models and diagnose performance issues.
• Experience across the full development lifecycle - design, coding, testing, debugging, and deployment - within agile delivery.
• Strong grasp of change management, source control (e.g., Git), and CI/CD practices.
• Track record of leading agile teams (Scrum, Kanban, or SAFe) and managing delivery against commitments.
• Excellent analytical, planning, and problem-solving skills, with sound technical judgment.
• Open, proactive written and oral communication skills, and the ability to work effectively in a team-oriented, matrix-managed, global environment.
• Fluent written and spoken English is a must.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Transportation Management System (TMS) software - a strong bonus.
• Proficiency in both Java and PHP.
• Broader knowledge of the freight, supply chain, or logistics domain (e.g., ocean/air/ground freight, EDI, customs, or visibility platforms).
• Familiarity with middleware and integration technologies (e.g., Service Oriented Architecture, IBM Sterling B2B Integrator, IBM WebSphere / IIB, Talend).
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and containerization (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Knowledge of PL/SQL and relational database design.
• Exposure to AI-assisted development tooling (e.g., GitHub Copilot) and its adoption across a team.
• Experience introducing engineering standards, tooling, or frameworks that measurably improved team output.
• Prior experience working across distributed, multi-vendor, international teams.

Why This Role

This is a rare opportunity to shape the technical direction of logistics platforms used at global scale. You will have the mandate to modernize what came before, build what comes next, and lead a talented international team - with the technical challenges, autonomy, and visibility to match.

Physical Capabilities

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. The position is considered to be sedentary, and no unusual physical requirements are necessary to perform daily tasks. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is frequently required to sit, stand, walk, bend, reach with hands and arms, and use vision, hearing, and speech. The employee is regularly required to use, but is not limited to, a computer and phone. The employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 10 pounds.

Please visit our website: www.bdpinternational.com