Job Information
Kroger Family of Companies Lead Software Engineer – Search Platform in Blue Ash, Ohio
We’re seeking a hands-on Search Platform Engineering Leadto serve as the technical lead for Kroger’s Search Coreteam. In this role, you will guide implementation decisions and software delivery for our search platform—designing and evolving data pipelinesand core servicesin Javaand Pythonthat power high‑scale, low‑latency search experiences across Kroger’s digital channels.
You’ll partner closely with Search Architect, product management, data engineering, and possible ML teams to deliver resilient, observable services; set engineering standards; and mentor developers while leading the team through design reviews, implementation, and production support. The role will ensure our search platform is performant, reliable, and easy to extend.
Accountable for proactively leading or supporting software engineering activities that create deliverables that guide the direction, development, and delivery of software solutions that meet business needs. Provide leadership, facilitation, analysis, and design tasks required to deliver critical business solutions. Develop target-state guidance (i.e., reusable standards, design patterns, guidelines, individual parts, and configurations) to evolve the organization's development process. Demonstrate the company's core values of respect, honesty, integrity, diversity, inclusion and, safety.
RESPONSIBILITIES - Develop a high-quality codebase, lead design discussions, execute development against design, and navigate complex codebase
Lead the development implementation of technology strategy within a defined set of teams. Executes against defined technology roadmap to support project portfolio and business strategy
Oversee the implementation of enterprise standards across domains: operations, infrastructure, data, applications, development, security & risk, and business continuance
Provide technical leadership to ensure clarity between ongoing projects and the strategic objectives of the company
Drive digital innovation by leveraging innovative new technologies and approaches to renovate, extend, and, transform the existing core technology base and IT estate
Implement high-level migration plans to address the gaps between the current and future state, typically in sync with the budgeting or other capital planning processes
Present opportunities with cost/benefit analysis to leadership to shape sound architectural decisions
Lead the analysis of the technology environment to detect critical deficiencies and recommend solutions for improvement
Mentor team members in software development principles, patterns, processes and, practices
Promote the capture and reuse of intellectual capital, including code objects and components
Draft and review architectural diagrams, interface specifications, class structures and, other design documents
Must be able to perform the essential job functions of this position with or without reasonable accommodation
QUALIFICATIONS Minimum
Bachelors Degree Computer Science or in a STEM major
5+ years of successful and applicable experience taking a lead role in building complex software and automation systems that has been successfully delivered to customers
5+ years of a proven track record of designing and delivering large scale, highquality systems
5+ years of successful and applicable handson experience in software or infrastructure development domain and principles, including design patterns and code structure
Strong knowledge of industry trends and industry competition
Deep knowledge in a minimum of two of the following technical disciplines: infrastructure and network design, application development, application programming interfaces (APIs), cloud, middleware, servers and storage, database management, and operations
Understanding of network and security architecture
Demonstrated written, oral and, presentation/public speaking communication skills
Proven ability to think and contribute at the strategic level
Desired
Demonstrated capability to build, mentor and maintain an inclusive teambased environment
Experience building solutions using elastic architectures (preferably Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform)
Programming Languages:
Strong proficiency in Javaand Pythonfor building scalable backend services and data pipelines.
Distributed Systems & Microservices:
Experience designing and operating highavailability, lowlatency servicesin a microservices architecture.
Search Technologies & Semantic Search:
Familiarity with search engines(e.g., Elasticsearch, Solr) and vector search frame