Senior Manager Software Engineering

We're hiring a Senior Manager Software Engineering to own this platform end-to-end. You'll lead a team of engineers, set the technical direction, and stay close enough to the code to design, review, and contribute when it matters. This is a platform ownership role with real co-ownership of business outcomes - not a hands-off people management seat.

What You'll Own & Do:

Platform Leadership:

• Set the platform direction - make the build/buy/extend calls, decide what is a primitive versus a feature, and own the technical roadmap.
• Own a platform spanning real-time pricing engines that optimize Buy Box win rates, automated listing syndication, and inventory availability management across multiple marketplace storefronts.
• Drive multi-marketplace expansion on a single platform spine - new channels without re-architecting.
• Own delivery metrics, capacity planning, and engineering investment decisions for the pod.

Team Leadership:

• Lead a team of 6+ engineers, including senior tech leads - design reviews, hiring, performance, growth conversations, and delivery health.
• Shape the engineering culture of the pod: high agency, AI-augmented SDLC, fast iteration, strong code quality.
• Partner closely with distributed teams, including our Global Capability Center in Chennai, India.

Cross-Functional Partnership & Outcomes:

• Partner with Product, Merchandising, and Marketplace Operations to translate business goals into platform capability - co-own the outcomes, not just the outputs.
• Drive AI-first engineering practices - Claude Code, Copilot, agentic workflows - as a default, not an experiment.

What You Bring to the Table:

• Platform mindset: you think in primitives, contracts, and extensibility - not just in features and tickets.
• A track record of building platforms, not just shipping features - multi-tenant, API-first, designed for extensibility.
• High agency: you frame the problem, move it forward, and don't wait for direction when the path is clear.
• Business co-ownership instinct: you care about the metrics the platform exists to move, not just the code that ships.
• Clear, direct communicator across engineering, product, and business stakeholders.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent work experience.
• 8+ years in software engineering with 3+ years leading engineering teams, including senior individual contributors and tech leads.
• Hands-on background in object-oriented programming languages (Java) and modern open-source frameworks (such as Spring Boot and React), or comparable open-stack technologies.
• Production experience on a major public cloud (Azure, AWS, or GCP), including container orchestration (Kubernetes or equivalent) and event-driven/messaging architectures (Kafka, Service Bus, Pub/Sub, or similar).
• Retail or e-commerce background - genuine understanding of how catalog, pricing, and channel operations work end-to-end.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master's degree in Software Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field.
• Direct experience integrating with major eMarketplace seller APIs or third-party orchestration tools (such as Rithum/ChannelAdvisor or Mirakl).
• Experience applying ML/AI in production - pricing optimization, demand forecasting, recommendation systems, or LLM/agentic workflows in commerce contexts.
• Experience working with globally distributed teams or Global Capability Centers.
• Demonstrated use of AI coding tools in your own and your team's day-to-day workflow (Claude Code, Copilot, Cursor, or similar).

What We Offer:

• Inclusive culture with associate-led Business Resource Groups.
• 22 days of PTO and Holiday Schedule (7 observed paid holidays + 1 floating holiday).
• Online and Retail Discounts, Company Match 401(k), Physical and Mental Health Wellness programs, and more.

The salary range represents the expected compensation for this role at the time of posting. The specific base pay may be influenced by a variety of factors to include the candidate's experience, skill set, education, geography, business considerations, and internal equity. In addition to base pay, this role may be eligible for bonuses, or other forms of variable compensation.

Staples is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Staples is the world's largest B2B office products company, serving millions of business customers through a diversified portfolio spanning contract sales, eCommerce, retail, and third-party marketplace channels. Staples Digital Solutions (SDS) is the technology organization powering that business - a team of passionate, collaborative, and agile engineers and architects committed to driving innovation and delivering customer-centric technology at scale. This role sits within the Merchandising & Pricing Technology team, part of Staples' Enterprise Data, AI and Platforms organization - the teams responsible for the data, AI, and commerce platforms that govern how Staples selects, prices, and sells products across its own channels and across the external marketplaces where Staples competes every day. Staples is building an in-house Marketplace Commerce Engine - a strategic alternative to third-party marketplace orchestration tools. The platform is how Staples grows its presence across major eMarketplace channels: real-time pricing that wins Buy Box at scale, automated listing syndication, and multi-marketplace inventory and availability management - all on a single platform spine. We're building it as a real platform: API-first, event-driven, multi-tenant, and designed to add new marketplaces and capabilities without re-platforming each time.