Engineering Lead - DEA

KeHE Distributors, LLC•Naperville, IL

About The Position

At KeHE, we’re obsessed with creating solutions, unboxing potential, and serving others – and it all starts with you. As an employee-owned distributor of natural and organic, specialty, and fresh products, we’re committed to making a positive impact and scaling our success together. With a culture that fosters development and opportunity, you’ll be embarking on a career that’s moving forward. When you join KeHE, you’re becoming part of a team that is a force for good. The DEA Lead Engineer is a hybrid role combining technical leadership and people management. This position is responsible to guide and coach Engineers (50% people leadership) as well as to deliver hands-on engineering and analytics solutions (50% technical delivery). The role partners with the Product Owner and other stakeholders to ensure high quality and flawless execution and measurable business value.

Requirements

Strong technical expertise in designing and delivering complex software solutions while maintaining high standards for quality, maintainability, and performance.
Ability to guide engineers through technical challenges, provide constructive feedback, and foster professional growth across the team.
Ability to coordinate development work, manage technical risks, address technical debt, and ensure predictable delivery of engineering initiatives.
Knowledge of system reliability engineering, monitoring, observability, and incident management practices that improve system stability and operational maturity.
Ability to translate business and product requirements into technical solutions while effectively communicating trade-offs and feasibility considerations to stakeholders.
7+ years of experience in data engineering and analytics, including at least 2 years in a leadership or coaching role.
Expertise in technologies including but not limited to SQL, Python, Spark and cloud platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP).
Deep knowledge of data architecture, modeling, governance, and integration best practices.
1+ years of people management responsibilities
Demonstrated success in delivering enterprise-scale data solutions and mentoring technical teams.
Experience influencing technical standards and driving modernization initiatives.
Bachelor’s degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related field preferred or similar coding education alternatives to traditional four-year degrees.

Responsibilities

Lead the technical execution of engineering initiatives, guiding design decisions, conducting code reviews, and ensuring adherence to engineering standards and best practices.
Lead and mentor high-performing engineering teams. Set clear expectations, career paths, and performance standards. Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement by providing coaching, performance feedback, and career development support while maintaining development plans and succession planning for team members.
Oversee delivery planning and execution, helping remove blockers, balancing hands-on development with technical oversight, and ensuring timely and high-quality delivery of software solutions.
Drive operational reliability and engineering maturity, monitoring system health through defined SLOs/SLIs, leading root-cause analysis efforts, and implementing DevOps/SRE practices that improve stability and reduce incident frequency.
Partner closely with product and business stakeholders, contributing technical insights during backlog preparation and prioritization while ensuring proposed solutions are technically feasible and aligned with roadmap goals.
Solve complex technical challenges and guide architectural decisions, contributing hands-on engineering work while setting high standards for coding, system design, and engineering quality.
Promote a strong engineering culture, modeling accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement while supporting adoption of agile and product-driven development practices.