Senior Technology Manager - Catalog and Search Engineering

Senior Technology Manager - Catalog and Search Engineering

Business Unit: Store Support Centre (SSC)

Time Type: Full-time

Description & Requirements

Who we are

lululemon is an innovative performance apparel company for yoga, running, training, and other athletic pursuits. We create transformational products and experiences that support people in moving, growing, connecting, and being well. Our success is due to our innovative products, emphasis on stores, commitment to our people, and the connections we make in every community. We focus on creating positive change to build a healthier, thriving future, including an equitable, inclusive, and growth-focused environment.

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 placement to ensure we are at the right place, right time, at the 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 merchandising 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 working with engineers in diverse geographies, reviewing design, code, solutions, implementation, and post-production support.

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Compensation and Benefits Package

lululemon’s compensation offerings are grounded in a pay-for-performance philosophy that recognizes exceptional individual and team performance. The typical hiring range for this position is from $158,900-$208,500 annually; the base pay offered is based on market location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and internal equity. As part of our total rewards offering, permanent employees in this position may be eligible for our competitive annual bonus program, subject to program eligibility requirements.

At lululemon, investing in our people is a top priority. We believe that when life works, work works. We strive to be the place where inclusive leaders come to develop and enable all to be well. Recognizing our teams for their performance and dedication, other components of our total rewards offerings include support of career development, wellbeing, and personal growth:

• Extended health and dental benefits, and mental health plans
• Paid time off
• Savings and retirement plan matching
• Parenthood top-up
• Extensive catalog of development course offerings
• People networks, mentorship programs, and leadership series (to name a few)

Note: The incentive programs, benefits, and perks have certain eligibility requirements. The Company reserves the right to alter these incentive programs, benefits, and perks in whole or in part at any time without advance notice.

Workplace Arrangement

This role is classified as Hybrid under our SSC Workplace Policy:

In-person collaboration is important, and much of the role can be performed remotely. Work is performed onsite at least 3 days per week. #LI-AG2

Only those applicants under consideration will be contacted. Please accept our utmost appreciation for your interest. lululemon is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. Employment decisions are based on merit and business needs, and not on race, color, creed, age, sex, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, religion, marital status, medical condition, physical or mental disability, military service, pregnancy, childbirth and related medical conditions or any other classification protected by federal, state or provincial and local laws and ordinances. Reasonable accommodation is available for qualified individuals with disabilities, upon request. This Equal Employment Opportunity policy applies to all practices relating to recruitment and hiring, compensation, benefits, discipline, transfer, termination and all other terms and conditions of employment. While management is primarily responsible for seeing that lululemon equal employment opportunity policies are implemented, you share in the responsibility for assuring that, by your personal actions, the policies are effective.

lululemon is committed to providing reasonable accommodation to applicants with disabilities. If you would like someone from our team to contact you for individualized support, email us at accommodations@lululemon.com. In your email, please include the position title, the location of the position, and the nature of your request.