Lead IT Engineer - Pricing and Promotions

Ulta Beauty, Inc. • Bolingbrook, IL

2d • Hybrid

About The Position

Live the experience. From professional empowerment to continual learning opportunities. From ongoing investment in new and emerging technologies to a career of self-determination. At Ulta Beauty, our tech team is critical to our scalability—and is recognized that way. We’ve been defined as a “mature start-up.” A place where interdepartmental exposure, open doors, and genuine collaboration is ubiquitous. Where challenges come fast and furious, requiring agility, mental dexterity, and creativity. Where our passion for better solutions drives us and is core to who we are. We’re engineering for the future of retail, and it’s no-holds-barred. But for those motivated by continual change and ambiguity, by superior leadership, by whip smart colleagues who will press you daily for your very best, you’ll find that virtually nothing’s impossible at Ulta Beauty. Ulta Beauty’s Enterprise Systems organization is seeking a passionate, hands-on Lead Engineer Pricing & Promotions to play a pivotal role in optimizing retail operations by leveraging advanced technologies and data-driven methodologies. As part of the Merchandising Technology Portfolio, this position is responsible for driving improvements & best practices that evolve our planning, optimization, and execution of pricing & promotion technology landscape that support strategies both online & in stores.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• 7+ years of experience in retail technology, with a focus on pricing & promotions, omnichannel merchandising technology experience preferred
• Strong expertise in data analytics, forecasting, and optimization algorithms.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to analyze complex data sets and translate them into clear, actionable insights.
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, capable of articulating technical strategies and business value to diverse stakeholders.
• Strong understanding of data governance, data integrity, and best practices for managing large datasets.
• Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously, prioritize effectively, and adapt to a fast-paced, changing retail landscape.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
• Proven leadership in cross-functional project delivery.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with data visualization tools like Tableau or Power BI is a plus.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the senior technical expert for pricing & promotion systems, guiding architectural decisions across services such as price management, promotion execution, markdown optimization, competitive price intelligence, and rules engines.
• Partner with Solution Architects to design scalable, modern, API-driven solutions that integrate across Merchandising, Inventory, Digital, Stores, and POS ecosystems.
• Establish and champion engineering best practices—code quality, reliability, performance, observability, CI/CD, and secure development.
• Lead the technical implementation of new pricing and promotion capabilities, including engine enhancements, configurations, data pipelines, integration services, and UI components.
• Troubleshoot complex issues across distributed systems, ensuring high availability and accuracy of pricing data flowing to downstream channels.
• Mentor engineers and elevate engineering standards across the pod.
• Collaborate closely with Product Managers for Pricing, Promo, and Merchandising to translate business outcomes into technical solutions and execution plans.
• Challenge requirements when needed, ensuring feasibility, scalability, and long-term maintainability of solutions.
• Shape and estimate epics, stories, and technical debt within the product backlog with a clear engineering point of view.
• Ensure pricing and promotion platforms operate with accuracy, stability, and speed—critical for in-store experience, digital channels, and margin management.
• Build robust monitoring, alerting, logging, and automated recovery patterns to reduce operational load.
• Lead incident resolution for pricing systems, perform root-cause analysis, and implement structural fixes.
• Act as the technical lead for integrating and extending commercial pricing and promotion platforms (e.g., price engines, promotion management suites, competitive intelligence tools).
• Evaluate vendor roadmaps, releases, and platform capabilities to ensure alignment with enterprise architecture and product roadmap needs.
• Partner with vendor engineering teams on technical issues, enhancement requests, performance tuning, and incident resolution.
• Ensure vendor-delivered components meet internal standards for security, quality, reliability, and data integrity.
• Evaluate new technologies (e.g., rule engines, pricing algorithms, event-driven architectures, agentic AI for price recommendations) and recommend adoption where appropriate.
• Identify opportunities to simplify and modernize legacy pricing solutions, reduce manual processes, and accelerate merchandising speed-to-market.
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives around data quality, processing performance, and system integration.
• Act as the technical point of contact for cross-functional teams—including Merchandising, Data & Analytics, Finance, Store Operations, and Digital Commerce—ensuring pricing and promotion capabilities meet enterprise needs.
• Mentor engineers across pods, fostering a culture of craftsmanship, innovation, and ownership.
• Influence roadmap prioritization by articulating technical risk, dependencies, and architectural investments clearly.

Benefits

• Full-time positions are eligible for paid time off, health, dental, vision, life and disability benefits.
• Part-time positions are eligible for dental, vision, life, and disability benefits.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level
• Number of Employees: 5,001-10,000 employees