Contractors’ Warehouse —
Software Engineer Senior Manager, Online Search (Remote)

Position Purpose:

Join our pioneering technology team at The Home Depot as a Senior Software Manager in Search. In this leadership role, you will guide a team dedicated to developing advanced search algorithms and systems that enhance our platform's performance and user experience.

As a Software Engineer Sr. Manager, you will be given a chance to contribute to the products we create, help grow the next generation of engineering talent, and help shape the technology strategy of the enterprise.
In addition, you will be given the chance to work with our most strategic vendors to ensure that 3rd party tools and applications are readily available to all product teams that are interested in using them. The Sr. Manager must exhibit the ability to lead managers and their teams and drive change management and process improvement.

Responsibilities:

• Lead the development and enhancement of scalable search algorithms, focusing on accuracy, relevance, and personalization using advanced Gen AI, LLMs, and vector databases.
• Manage and grow a team of software and ML engineers, fostering a culture of innovation and continuous improvement.
• Collaborate closely with product management, data science, UX/UI designers, and other stakeholders to define the product vision and roadmap for advanced search functionalities.
• Oversee the architecture and integration of sophisticated search systems, ensuring robustness, scalability, and maintainability.
• Implement and oversee ML platforms like Vertex AI and orchestration tools such as Airflow to streamline operations and enhance efficiency.
• Drive the adoption of ML and MLOps practices to optimize the performance and reliability of search functions.
• Utilize big data technologies such as Snowflake, BigQuery, Spark, and Apache Beam to manage and analyze large datasets effectively.
• Develop and maintain APIs and microservices architectures using Spring Boot and Micronaut.
• Ensure adherence to high-quality software development practices, including continuous integration, automated testing, and robust release procedures.
• Employ real-time streaming technologies such as Pub/Sub for dynamic data processing.
• Manage NoSQL databases and Elasticsearch for efficient data indexing and retrieval.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• At least 8 years of software development experience, with 3 or more years in a managerial role.
• Strong technical expertise in search algorithms, machine learning, data structures, and complex systems.
• Proven experience in designing and implementing large-scale search systems.
• Demonstrated leadership skills, with a track record of mentoring and developing high-performing teams.
• Strong analytical skills, excellent problem-solving abilities, and sound judgment.
• Exceptional communication skills, capable of handling complex projects and coordinating multiple stakeholders.
• Comfortable navigating ambiguity and making decisions in a dynamic environment.

Key Responsibilities:

20% Strategy & Planning:

• Works and negotiates with partners on the staffing of skilled engineering positions on product teams
• Contributes to and makes recommendations for strategic plans in support of key objectives in a timely and fiscally responsible manner
• Supports and nurtures strategic vendor relationships; recommends ways to influence vendors that aligned to domain, portfolio, and enterprise strategic objectives
• Evaluates new technologies for adoption across the enterprise
• Helps to identify and demonstrate emerging technologies for adoption by product teams

20% Delivery & Execution:

• Collaborates and pairs with product team members (UX, engineering, and product management) to create secure, reliable, scalable software solutions
• Documents, reviews and ensures that all quality and change control standards are met
• Writes custom code or scripts to automate infrastructure, monitoring services, and test cases
• Works with vendors and partners for the successful implementation of critical tooling and platforms
• Creates meaningful dashboards, logging, alerting, and responses to ensure that issues are captured and addressed proactively
• Contributes to enterprise-wide tools to drive destructive testing, automation, and engineering empowerment
• Participates in and leads review board sessions to drive consistency across the enterprise
• Makes suggestions that help drive operational excellence to create internal customer satisfaction and meet operational metrics
• Fills in on product teams for engineers who are out of the office

15% Support & Enablement:

• Fields questions from engineers, product teams, or support teams
• Monitors tools and participates in conversations to encourage collaboration across product teams
• Learns, through reading, tutorials, and videos, new technologies and best practices being used within other technology organizations
• Provides application support for software running in production
• Acts as a technical escalation point for the engineers on the team

45% People:

• Provides leadership, mentoring, and coaching to Software Engineers
• Attracts, retains, and develops top talent to build a world class Software Engineering Team
• Conducts annual and mid-year reviews by reviewing individual development plans and team feedback
• Fosters collaboration with team members to drive consistency across product teams, and finds opportunities to expose engineers to career interests
• Acts as a proponent of modern software development practices
• Guides team members in strategy, alignment, analysis, and execution tasks within and across product teams
• Participates in and contributes to learning activities around modern software design and development core practices (communities of practice)
• Builds relationships with technology leaders at other companies to learn best practices and elegant solutions to common problems

Direct Manager/Direct Reports:

• Typically reports to the Technology Director, Sr. Director or Vice President.

Travel Requirements:

• Typically requires overnight travel 5% to 20% of the time.

Physical Requirements:

• Most of the time is spent sitting in a comfortable position and there is frequent opportunity to move about. On rare occasions there may be a need to move or lift light articles.

Working Conditions:

• Located in a comfortable indoor area. Any unpleasant conditions would be infrequent and not objectionable.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Must be eighteen years of age or older.
• Must be legally permitted to work in the United States.
• Mastery of an object oriented programming language (preferably Java)
• Must be legally permitted to work in the United States

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in the e-commerce domain.
• Familiarity with agile development methodologies.
• Knowledge of performance optimization in high-traffic environments.
• Experience with distributed computing and real-time analytics platforms.

Minimum Education:

• The knowledge, skills and abilities typically acquired through the completion of a bachelor's degree program or equivalent degree in a field of study related to the job.

Preferred Education:

• No additional education

Minimum Years of Work Experience:

• 6

Preferred Years of Work Experience:

• No additional years of experience

Minimum Leadership Experience:

• None

Preferred Leadership Experience:

• None

Certifications:

• None

Competencies:

• Attracts Top Talent: Attracting and selecting the best talent to meet current and future business needs
• Balances Stakeholders: Anticipating and balancing the needs of multiple stakeholders
• Builds Effective Teams: Building strong-identity teams that apply their diverse skills and perspectives to achieve common goals
• Business Insight: Applying knowledge of business and the marketplace to advance the organization's goals
• Collaborates: Building partnerships and working collaboratively with others to meet shared objectives
• Communicates Effectively: Developing and delivering multi-mode communications that convey a clear understanding of the unique needs of different audiences
• Develops Talent: Developing people to meet both their career goals and the organization's goals
• Drives Engagement: Creating a climate where people are motivated to do their best to help the organization achieve its objectives
• Drives Vision and Purpose: Painting a compelling picture of the vision and strategy that motivates others to action
• Manages Ambiguity: Operating effectively, even when things are not certain or the way forward is not clear
• Organizational Savvy: Maneuvering comfortably through complex policy, process, and people-related organizational dynamics
• Situational Adaptability: Adapting approach and demeanor in real time to match the shifting demands of different situations