Technical Lead

The Opportunity

As a Technical Lead, you’ll play a pivotal role in shaping the next generation of our SaaS platform, a highly scalable, data-driven product built for the evolving needs of the retail technology industry. This is an opportunity to lead a talented engineering team that’s passionate about delivering innovative, reliable, and high-performance software.

You’ll guide the technical direction of our platform architecture, mentor developers, and ensure that best practices in coding, design, and system reliability are consistently applied. Beyond building great software, you’ll be part of a company that is actively embracing AI-assisted development and emerging frameworks like Agent OS and Cursor to accelerate productivity, improve quality, and redefine how engineering teams collaborate.

The Company

We are a small team with a big vision: to be the premier provider of cloud technology solutions for retailers. KWI offers a complete, unified commerce solution from a single database, specifically designed to help specialty retailers grow their business. Our portfolio of customers includes Pandora, Bluemercury, Tom Ford and many other globally recognizable brands.

We combine Point of Sale, Merchandising, Order Management, eCommerce, CRM, and Loss Prevention into one cloud-based platform. We are a Values and Mission driven organization, and we believe that if we develop and demonstrate leadership in our strategy, operations, and people, we will continue to drive product innovation and service excellence.

Who we are

We have the stability of a company that has been around for 40+ years and the energy of a startup that is still figuring out how to do things better every day. We move fast, we question the status quo, and we expect everyone on the team to do the same. If you are genuinely curious, have a better-than-average level of common sense, and get excited by solving real problems rather than just doing your job description - KWI is for you. We do not have a lot of bureaucracy and we do not want people who need it. What we do have is a team that shows up, figures things out, and takes pride in the work.

As a Technical Lead, you excel at the following core competencies

• Building partnerships and working collaboratively with others to meet shared objectives.
• Operating effectively, even when things are not certain or the way forward is not clear.
• Takes full ownership over the decisions, actions, and failures.

The impact you'll make

• Lead the development and implementation of software projects from inception to deployment.
• Deep experience in distributed systems, AI development, and software architecture to help us build and scale intelligent, autonomous systems using Spec Driven Development or Agentic Development.
• You’ll lead the design and development of next-generation AI-driven applications powered by agent frameworks, ensuring performance, safety, and interoperability across our platforms.
• Lead proof-of-concept development to validate new AI agent workflows, APIs, and interfaces.
• Evaluate emerging AI agent technologies and contribute to long-term architectural roadmaps.
• Be a creative problem solver who can draw on an array of expertise and technology to design and implement reliable, scalable, and maintainable solutions to challenging problems.
• Work closely with multiple teams to deliver transformational changes to our processes and technologies.
• Lead the technical specification, development, integration, testing and release of software components
• Identify and address technical challenges, optimize code for performance, and participate in ongoing code refactoring.
• Design and implement scalable software systems aligned with organizational architecture and security best practices.

What you will bring

• BS Degree in Computer Science/Engineering related degree or equivalent work experience
• Hands-on experience with AI Coding tool. Agent OS, Claude Code, Cursor or similar frameworks.
• 6+ Years of enterprise level experience
• Expertise in Service-oriented architectures, microservices, advanced database schemas, relational and nonrelational databases, highly scalable and available web services.
• The ability to context shift and manage multiple priorities at the same time
• Hands-on experience in building RESTful Web Services
• Experienced with microservices.
• Prior experience using SQL, Hibernate, and one or more DB (MySQL, Oracle, Postgres, etc)
• Prior experience using NoSQL. (Redis, MongoDB, DynamoDB, etc)
• Experience with automated testing frameworks (TDD, Mocking, Unit/Functional/Integration, Playwright)
• Experience with development and CI tools: maven, git, Jenkins, Puppet, Crucible, Jira
• Experience working with messaging systems. (RabbitMQ, Kafka)
• Experience with Docker/Containerization.
• Experience with Javascript, React Component Libraries
• Extensive experience with Agile methodologies such as Kanban, Scrum or SAFE

As a member of the KWI team you will receive

• Full Medical, Dental and Vision
• Annual bonus eligible
• Free gym in the building
• Generous PTO policy
• Summer Fridays....all year round
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Discount from building café
• 401(K) with a 50% company match (up to 6% of employee contribution)
• Employee Referral Program
• (1) Volunteer day each year

Our work space

We understand that our teams need flexibility, which is why we follow a hybrid schedule. Our in-office days of Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, and employees are allowed to work remotely on Wednesdays and Friday.

We are also a collaborative group and believe that getting together in person allows our team to do their best work. Together we enjoy monthly events, bagels every Thursday, a state-of-the-art coffee machine, a full snack pantry and many more surprise and delight moments throughout the year.

Our commitment to you

At KWI, we know that cultivating diversity and fostering an inclusive work environment is critical to our impact and success. We create an environment where no individual is advantaged or disadvantaged because of their background. We offer equal opportunity employment regardless of race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability status, age, marital status, or protected veteran status.

With a commitment to maintaining a bias-free environment in which harassment is prohibited, we respect cultural diversity and comply with the laws of the places in which we operate. We expect our business partners, suppliers, clients, and all our team members to uphold these commitments.