lululemon

Who we are

lululemon is an innovative performance apparel company for yoga, running, training, and other athletic pursuits. Setting the bar in technical fabrics and functional design, we create transformational products and experiences that support people in moving, growing, connecting, and being well. We owe our success to our innovative product, emphasis on stores, commitment to our people, and the incredible connections we make in every community we're in. As a company, we focus on creating positive change to build a healthier, thriving future. In particular, that includes creating an equitable, inclusive and growth-focused environment for our people.

About this team

The Senior Tech Manager role is in the Catalog and Search Engineering group driving innovation and technical excellence in core product areas. You will oversee the development and optimization of APIs that power our product catalog, search systems, and merchandise publishing workflows, ensuring scalable, reliable, and high-performance solutions. 

In this role, you will work cross-functionally with Product, Engineering, and Business stakeholders to design and implement systems that enable seamless merchandise onboarding, product discoverability, and search relevancy.

We are a fast-growing team with the vision to enhance lululemon product to ensure we are placing it at the right place, right time at right location. 

A day in the life

We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Senior Engineering Manager with a strong background in retail or eCommerce environments. The ideal candidate will have experience with Catalog or PIM workflows, publishing and merchandizing flows, search technologies like OpenSearch, Elasticsearch, or similar, and a proven track record of enhancing search functionalities to improve user experience and business outcomes.

You will spend a fair amount of time planning the evolution of the tools and systems that make up your platform & business applications, guiding your team’s roadmap year to year. You will contribute heavily to our Engineering principles by maintaining the practical “how we do it” documentation, and by partnering with Senior Leadership and Principal Engineers to lead a Community of Practice aimed at increasing Engineer training and development for your technology stack. The role requires to work with engineers in diverse geographies, reviewing design, code, solutions, implementation and postproduction support.

Leadership & Strategy

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of software engineers working on catalog management, search API systems, and product publishing workflows.
• Drive engineering best practices around scalability, observability, and performance optimization.
• Collaborate closely with cross-functional teams to align technical roadmaps with business priorities.

Technical Execution

• Oversee the design and development of catalog APIs for product ingestion, enrichment, and publishing workflows.
• Drive improvements to search algorithms and infrastructure to enhance product discoverability, relevance, and response times.
• Ensure data integrity and consistency in merchandise management pipelines across systems.
• Focus on building reliable, secure, and high-availability systems that support large-scale catalogs.

Process & Collaboration

• Partner with Product Managers and Designers to define requirements, provide technical feasibility insights, and scope efforts.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to define SLA/SLOs for critical APIs and workflows.
• Identify bottlenecks, measure performance, and continuously optimize end-to-end publishing flows.

Innovation & Growth

• Introduce tools and frameworks to improve engineering velocity, code quality, and developer productivity.
• Stay up to date with industry trends in catalog management, search systems, and API design to drive innovation.

Qualifications:

Education & Experience

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 3-5 years in a leadership role managing high-performing engineering teams.
• Proven experience overseeing catalog systems, search API platforms, and merchandise/product publishing workflows.

Technical Expertise

• Strong background in building and scaling RESTful APIs and/or GraphQL APIs.
• Experience with search engines and technologies (e.g., Elasticsearch, Solr, or similar tools).
• Solid understanding of data pipelines, ETL workflows, and product publishing systems.
• Familiarity with microservices architecture, cloud-based systems (AWS, Azure), and CI/CD practices.
• Good understanding of programming skills in languages such as Java or Python.
• Experience with system design, architecture, scaling, and performance testing. 
• Experience with integration & streaming technologies like Kafka is a plus.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Proven ability to mentor and grow engineering talent, fostering a culture of technical excellence and ownership.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to convey complex technical ideas to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience managing distributed or hybrid teams is a plus.

Preferred Skills

• Prior experience with e-commerce systems, product catalogs, or merchandise management workflows.
• Familiarity with large-scale search optimization and ranking methodologies.
• Knowledge of machine learning or AI-based search techniques is a plus.