Software Engineer-III

Spreetail is becoming a third-party logistics provider, taking on warehousing and fulfillment for external merchants and brands. As the SD3 Tech Lead, you will provide technical leadership for a key workstream within this platform - inventory management, order routing, warehouse operations, or client integrations - guiding design decisions and the engineers working within it, while reporting into and aligning with the Staff engineer(s) setting overall platform architecture.

This is a technical leadership role without formal people-management responsibility: you won't have direct reports, but you will set technical direction for your workstream, review designs and code, unblock engineers, and be the person others look to for judgment calls within your area.

This platform is being built AI-native from the start, so you'll help shape how forecasting, automated exception handling, and anomaly detection are integrated into production fulfillment workflows within your workstream - not just build individual features, but guide your team in building them.

Success in this role looks like:

• A well-architected, reliable set of services within your workstream (inventory, order, warehouse ops, or client-integration domain)
• Engineers on your workstream shipping confidently because designs and technical direction are clear
• Reduced manual intervention in exception handling within your area through automation and, where relevant, AI-assisted detection
• Design docs and technical decisions that Staff engineers can review quickly and trust
• Faster onboarding of new 3PL clients through well-built, reusable components in your workstream
• Engineers around you leveling up through your code reviews, design guidance, and mentorship

Key Responsibilities

Lead Technical Direction for Your Workstream

• Own the technical design and quality of services within your workstream, such as:
• Multi-client inventory management and warehouse allocation
• Order intake, routing, and fulfillment orchestration
• Shipment tracking and carrier integrations
• Client onboarding and data integration (APIs, EDI, flat-file)
• Returns and exception-handling workflows
• Break down ambiguous problems into clear technical plans for the engineers on your workstream
• Ensure designs align with overall platform architecture set by Staff engineers

Guide AI-Native Platform Capabilities Within Your Area

• Lead the integration of forecasting, ETA prediction, or anomaly-detection signals into your workstream's fulfillment workflows
• Partner with Staff engineers and data/ML engineers to translate model outputs into reliable operational logic
• Set the standard for how exceptions and anomalies get detected and actioned automatically within your area

Lead Without Direct Reports

• Act as the go-to technical decision-maker for engineers working in your workstream, without formal people-management authority
• Run or contribute heavily to design reviews, unblocking technical debates with sound judgment
• Mentor engineers through code review, pairing, and technical guidance
• Flag people or delivery risks to the Engineering Manager, while staying focused on technical leadership yourself

Bring E-commerce & Logistics Domain Expertise

• Apply strong knowledge of order-to-fulfillment flows to guide design decisions and catch edge cases early (backorders, split shipments, peak-volume spikes)
• Guide the team on tradeoffs specific to multi-tenant clients with different fulfillment rules

Raise the Bar on Quality & Reliability

• Set and enforce standards for testing, observability, and reliability within your workstream
• Proactively identify and drive down technical debt as the platform scales
• Ensure your workstream's services are well-documented and easy for others to build on

Collaborate Across the Team

• Work closely with Staff engineers, product, and operations stakeholders to clarify requirements and priorities
• Represent your workstream in cross-team architecture discussions
• Communicate technical tradeoffs and risks clearly to both engineers and stakeholders

Experience & Key Skills

Experience

• 6-8+ years of experience building and shipping production backend systems
• Experience informally or formally leading the technical direction of a team or workstream (design reviews, mentorship, setting standards)
• Experience with e-commerce order management, inventory, warehouse, or logistics systems is a strong plus
• Comfortable working in a fast-moving, still-being-defined 0-to-1 environment

Technical Skills

• Strong fundamentals in backend engineering: APIs, data modeling, databases, and distributed systems
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS preferred) and cloud-native service design
• Familiarity with event-driven architectures (queues, streams, async processing)
• Strong testing, debugging, and production-support practices

Technical Leadership

• Ability to set technical direction and make sound judgment calls without direct authority
• Strong code review and mentorship instincts
• Comfort representing a workstream in broader architecture discussions

Domain & AI Exposure (Nice to Have)

• Exposure to EDI standards or 3PL/WMS integration patterns
• Experience integrating ML model outputs (forecasts, predictions, anomaly scores) into application logic
• Interest in growing domain expertise in ecommerce logistics and fulfillment

Collaboration & Communication

• Ability to influence and align engineers without formal authority over them
• Clear written and verbal communication, especially in async, distributed team settings
• Comfort balancing hands-on technical work with guiding others