Director, Integrations & Innovation – Retail Software Engineering

Western Union•Austin, TX

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

As Director, Retail Software Engineering, you will lead the evolution of our retail software platform, overseeing middleware, API ecosystems, and the operational backbone that powers our customer experience. You will champion both innovation and rigorous software hygiene, ensuring our systems are secure, resilient, and performant. Key Responsibilities 1. Strategy & Innovation Technical Vision: Define and execute the roadmap for next-generation retail integrations, transitioning from monolithic architectures to event-driven microservices and cloud-native solutions. R&D and Modernization: Lead Proof of Concepts (POCs) for emerging technologies (AI/ML at the edge, contactless payments, real-time inventory syncing) and drive their adoption into production. API Economy: Oversee the design and governance of external and internal APIs, ensuring seamless connectivity between POS, e-commerce, supply chain, and third-party vendors. 2. Operations & Reliability (SRE) Operational Excellence: Own the availability, latency, and overall health of critical retail services. Champion Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices to minimize toil and maximize uptime (99.99%+). Incident Management: Lead high-severity incident resolution and conduct blameless post-mortems to prevent recurrence. Observability: Drive a culture of data-driven debugging. Ensure comprehensive monitoring (logging, metrics, tracing) is implemented across the stack to proactively identify bottlenecks before they impact the customer. 3. Technical Health & Hygiene Code Quality & Security: Establish and enforce strict standards for software quality assurance. Oversee the implementation of static analysis, vulnerability scanning, and automated testing frameworks. Tech Debt Management: Aggressively identify and remediate technical debt. Manage "Health & Hygiene" initiatives including patching, upgrading legacy frameworks, and decommissioning obsolete infrastructure. Compliance: Ensure all software integrations adhere to rigorous security standards (PCI-DSS, SOC2) and data privacy regulations. 4. Leadership & Culture Team Building: Recruit, mentor, and retain a diverse team of Engineering Managers, Architects, and Principal Engineers. Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Product Management, Security, and Infrastructure teams to align engineering output with business goals.

Requirements

Deep understanding of modern architecture (Microservices, Event-Driven Architecture), Cloud Platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP), and DevOps/CI/CD pipelines.
10+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, with at least 5 years in a senior leadership role (Director level or above), ideally within retail, payments, or financial services.
Demonstrated success leading large-scale engineering teams in a global, matrixed organization.
Proven track record of modernizing legacy systems and delivering cloud-native, event-driven architectures at scale.
Experience implementing Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices and managing 24/7 production environments with high transaction volumes.
Experience leading incident management, root cause analysis, and blameless post-mortems.
Experience fostering a culture of innovation, accountability, and continuous improvement.
Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, partnering effectively with Product, Security, Infrastructure, Compliance, and Business stakeholders.
Excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to influence and align stakeholders at all levels, including C-suite and global teams.

Responsibilities

Strategy & Innovation Technical Vision: Define and execute the roadmap for next-generation retail integrations, transitioning from monolithic architectures to event-driven microservices and cloud-native solutions.
R&D and Modernization: Lead Proof of Concepts (POCs) for emerging technologies (AI/ML at the edge, contactless payments, real-time inventory syncing) and drive their adoption into production.
API Economy: Oversee the design and governance of external and internal APIs, ensuring seamless connectivity between POS, e-commerce, supply chain, and third-party vendors.
Operational Excellence: Own the availability, latency, and overall health of critical retail services. Champion Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices to minimize toil and maximize uptime (99.99%+).
Incident Management: Lead high-severity incident resolution and conduct blameless post-mortems to prevent recurrence.
Observability: Drive a culture of data-driven debugging. Ensure comprehensive monitoring (logging, metrics, tracing) is implemented across the stack to proactively identify bottlenecks before they impact the customer.
Code Quality & Security: Establish and enforce strict standards for software quality assurance. Oversee the implementation of static analysis, vulnerability scanning, and automated testing frameworks.
Tech Debt Management: Aggressively identify and remediate technical debt. Manage "Health & Hygiene" initiatives including patching, upgrading legacy frameworks, and decommissioning obsolete infrastructure.
Compliance: Ensure all software integrations adhere to rigorous security standards (PCI-DSS, SOC2) and data privacy regulations.
Team Building: Recruit, mentor, and retain a diverse team of Engineering Managers, Architects, and Principal Engineers.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with Product Management, Security, and Infrastructure teams to align engineering output with business goals.

Benefits

You will also have access to short-term incentives, multiple health insurance options, accident and life insurance, and access to best-in-class development platforms, to name a few (https://careers.westernunion.com/global-benefits/).
Your United States – specific benefits include: Family First Program Flexible Time off Medical, Dental and Life Insurance Tuition Assistance Program Parental Leave

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