Senior Manager Software Engineering

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 (Git Hub 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…