What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Director Software Engineering position at Sprouts Farmers Market?
The Director of Software Engineering leads cross-functional engineering teams to deliver operational plans and strategies that are scalable, secure, and AI-powered platforms that drive store operations, associate productivity, and customer experience.
This role partners closely with Product and Business teams to influence product direction, translate business needs into technology solutions, and ensure reliable, high-quality delivery and operation of mission-critical systems at scale.
Build, operate, and continuously improve store technology platforms using AI, automation, and modern engineering practices to deliver measurable business impact.
Scope of Ownership
- Engineering delivery for Store Platforms (Inventory, Pricing, Fulfillment, Associate Tools)
- AI-enabled systems (Generative AI, Agentic AI, Automation)
- Architecture, scalability, reliability, and operational excellence
- Engineering execution across build → run → scale
Overview of Responsibilities
Engineering & Platform Leadership
- Develop and execute the engineering vision and roadmap aligned with business and product strategy
- Define and maintain enterprise architecture for scalability, performance, and security
- Ensure delivery of cloud-native, resilient, and high-performance systems
- Establish best practices across SDLC, DevOps, microservices, and containerization
Product Partnership & Business Influence
- Partner and communicate with Product and Business teams to shape product strategy and roadmap
- Translate business problems into scalable technical solutions
- Influence prioritization using:
- ROI
- Customer impact
- Store productivity
- Contribute to a strong product operating model:
- Discovery
- Experimentation
- Continuous feedback
AI-First Retail Transformation
- Define and drive an AI-first engineering strategy
- Identify high-impact opportunities using:
- Data insights
- Customer behavior
- Operational metrics
- Drive adoption of:
- Generative AI
- Machine Learning
- Agentic AI
- Intelligent automation
- Enable AI-powered solutions for:
- Inventory optimization
- Labor productivity
- Personalization
- Decision intelligence
Product Support & Operational Excellence (Build Run)
- Lead engineering teams to build, operate, and continuously improve platforms
- Ensure high availability and reliability of store-critical systems
- Define and enforce:
- SLAs / SLOs
- Uptime targets
- Operational KPIs
- Establish strong production support model:
- On-call strategy
- Incident management
- Root cause analysis (RCA)
- Continuous improvement
- Ensure systems are built with:
- Observability (logs, metrics, traces)
- Resilience and fault tolerance
Leadership & Execution
- Lead and mentor engineering managers and teams
- Drive delivery excellence using Agile and DevOps practices
- Manage:
- Resource allocation
- Prioritization
- Risk mitigation
- Collaborate across:
- Product
- Store Operations
- Supply Chain
- Executive leadership
Vendor & Ecosystem Management
- Evaluate and manage technology partners and vendors
- Support build vs buy decisions
- Ensure cost-effective and scalable solutions
Qualifications
- 15 years engineering experience; 5 years in leadership
- Strong experience in:
- Distributed systems
- Cloud platforms
- Modern development practices
- Experience with:
- AI/ML platforms
- Generative AI / LLMs
- AI observability
- Strong collaboration with Product:
- Discovery
- Prioritization
- Outcome-driven delivery
Core Competencies
- Coaching and Developing Others
- Communication
- Customer Focus
- Driving for Results
- Leading Change
- Strategic Planning
Benefits
In addition to a rewarding career, Sprouts offers a comprehensive program to help support you and your family. These programs include:
- Competitive pay
- Sick time plan that you can use to support you or your immediate families health
- Vacation accrual plan
- Opportunities for career growth
- 15% discount for you and one other family member in your household on all purchases made at Sprouts
- Flexible schedules
- Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
- 401(K) Retirement savings plan with a generous company match
- Company paid life insurance
- Contests and appreciation events throughout the year full of prizes, food and fun!
Eligibility requirements may apply for the following benefits:
- Bonus based on company and/or individual performance
- Affordable benefit coverage, including medical, dental and vision
- Health Savings Account with company match
- Pre-tax Flexible Spending Accounts for healthcare and dependent care
- Company paid short-term disability coverage
- Paid parental leave for both mothers and fathers
- Paid holidays
Get Paid Every Day!
Sprouts Farmers Market offers DailyPay - if you’re hired as an eligible employee, you’ll be able to transfer the money you’ve already earned at no extra cost, and get it the next business day, for free. We offer DailyPay so you don’t have to wait for payday to access the money you’ve already worked for. With DailyPay, you can see how much you’ve made every day and you can transfer your money any time before payday.
You can learn more by visiting https://www.dailypay.com/partners/sprouts-farmers-market/.
Why Sprouts
Grow with us!
If you have a passion for inspiring people and a flair for fresh food, consider applying for a job at Sprouts! With a focus on customer service, our neighborhood grocery stores offer high-quality, farm fresh produce, natural meats, plenty of scoop-your-own bulk goods and much more in a fun, friendly, old-fashioned farmer’s market setting. Come grow your career in healthy living with a fast-paced, rapidly growing company and teams that pride themselves on empowering others along their journey.
The above statements are intended to describe the general nature and level of the work being performed by people assigned to this work. This is not an exhaustive list of all duties, responsibilities, and requirements. Sprouts’ management reserves the right to amend and change duties, responsibilities, and requirements to meet business and organizational needs as necessary.
Sprouts will consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of the Fair Chance in Hiring Ordinance.
California Residents: We collect information in accordance with California law, please see here for more information.