Advanced Software Engineering Manager

We are seeking a Software Engineering Manager to lead teams and guide execution across high throughput microservices and data analytics platforms. You will play a key role in shaping technical strategy, driving delivery, and building strong engineering practices across application and data domains, analytics workflows, and reporting platforms. You will partner closely with product, architecture, and operations stakeholders to deliver backend systems that meet demanding performance, availability, and scalability requirements. This opportunity is ideal for someone who thrives at the intersection of platform engineering, data-driven systems, and people leadership.

The Customer Platform is Kroger’s enterprise foundation for customer data, providing a centralized source of truth for Customer data. It brings together core data, capabilities, and cross‑functional teams to support both operational use cases and enterprise analytics. This position is for an Engineering Manager for the backend software engineering teams in the Customer Platform space. 

Direct & manage the software design, development, implementation & support of software engineering teams & lead engineering projects. Engage in technical design discussions & drive technical architecture. Manage multiple initiatives & be accountable for delivering multiple releases on schedule with the highest quality standards. Demonstrate the company's core values of respect, honesty, integrity, diversity, inclusion and safety.

- Partner & collaborate with engineering peers, product management, product design, & third parties (as appropriate) to prioritize deliverables providing the greatest value to our customers and business
- Hire & manage engineers & application system analysts; assign, direct, & evaluate their work/performance by writing performance reviews & providing feedback
- Present practical input for strategic technology decisions; synthesize complex problems & present simple, practical, reliable, & maintainable solutions
- Drive strategic alignment of system specifications, associate requirements, & project schedules of technology services
- Responsible for systems performance & resolution of production incidents, which may require 24hr/7day week coverage
- Work with Product Management to prioritize, scope & plan business milestones
- Support preparation of technology roadmap & provide input to business roadmap
- Monitor new technologies & trends within the industry
- Improve technology agility facilitating the use & creation of Cloud Services, REST APIs, design patterns, Behavior Driven Development (BDD), Test Driven Design (TDD), Continuous Integration (CI)/Continuous Deployment (CD), version control, proper environment releases, etc.
- Drive root-cause analysis of critical business & production issues to prevent future occurrences as well as review/approve potential solutions
- Establish performance standards & procedures, regulatory compliance & conduct ongoing performance audits & take action
- Must be able to perform the essential job functions of this position with or without reasonable accommodation
 

Minimum
- Bachelor's Degree computer science, information systems, or related technical field
- High School Diploma or GED 
- Any understanding of & practice in agile software development & management
- Any experience/familiarity with RDBMS, NoSQL, Big Data technologies
- Any experience with web/app containers such as Apache/Tomcat, Jboss or related skill
- Any direct technical experience in related disciplines
- Any extensive experience building/deploying services and/or applications using: Java, Spring/Spring Boot, REST APIs, Swagger, Node, Azure, GitHub, CI/CD, Kubernetes
- 2+ years of experience in eCommerce, retails systems or high transaction software solutions
- 5+ years of experience in administrative management of technical teams and/ or extended staff
- Excellent communication, collaboration, reporting, analytical & problem-solving skills
- Strong leadership & negotiation skills with business & technical group

Desired
- Master's Degree computer science, information systems, or related technical field
- Any experience developing and/or architecting front-end experiences � React, Swift (native iOS), Kotlin (native Android)
- Any of experience developing and/or architecting cloud-hosted backend services with Azure and/or GCP
- 2+ years of experience in leading engineering teams of 5+ engineers & coaching, mentoring individuals to grow their career

• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including prior experience managing backend software engineering teams across application and/or data platform domains.
• Experience leading teams responsible for mission-critical or customer-facing platforms operating at scale.
• Demonstrated experience managing, mentoring and coordinating large onshore and offshore teams across engineering and analytics initiatives.
• Experience balancing people leadership, technical direction, delivery management, and platform evolution across both application and data domains.
• Strong collaboration skills to work cross-functionally with business stakeholders, architecture, analytics teams, and engineering leaders to define strategy and deliver large-scale distributed platforms
• Experience driving modernization initiatives spanning microservices architecture, data platforms, and engineering process maturity.
• Strong technical background in backend microservices development, service design, API-driven systems, event-driven patterns, large-scale data processing, transformation, data analytics, and reporting workflows.
• Experience with distributed data platforms and databases, including scalability, performance optimization, reliability, and governance considerations.
• Strong understanding of software engineering fundamentals, SDLC practices, and operational excellence.