Director, Software Engineering - Team Art Locker Platform

BSN SPORTS, part of Varsity Brands, is a team athletic gear company developing platforms that support coaches and administrators. The Director, Software Engineering will lead and develop the backend engineering team responsible for the Team Art Locker platform, establish engineering practices, oversee delivery, and build team capability through coaching and mentorship.

Responsibilities:

• Build, coach, develop, and retain a high-performing backend engineering team; set clear expectations and provide continuous, candid, growth-oriented feedback
• Design and run structured onboarding that ramps new hires quickly into bounded workstream ownership, and support recently converted contractors through the transition to internal roles
• Create individualized development plans, mentorship pairings, and growth paths for every engineer; develop Lead Software Engineers toward larger scope and build succession depth
• Foster an inclusive culture of ownership, learning, collaboration, and continuous improvement
• Establish, teach, and continuously reinforce day-to-day engineering practices: code review, automated testing, CI/CD, observability, documentation, and secure development habits
• Build the team’s learning loops — design review forums, pairing, tech talks, and shared standards — so knowledge spreads rather than siloing in individuals
• Translate the patterns, standards, and technical direction set by senior architects into the team’s daily work, and ensure they are adopted consistently
• Champion software quality and security practices in partnership with Architecture, Security, and Quality Engineering
• Lead day-to-day delivery of backend workstreams — including the QOE→VOE and CC→VOE migrations, core services, and API work — against priorities set by the SVP
• Run disciplined planning and execution rhythms: sprint planning, capacity management, dependency coordination, and removal of blockers
• Monitor delivery health and quality, and drive continuous improvements that make delivery more predictable quarter over quarter
• Ensure operational discipline: production support habits, incident response, and blameless root-cause analysis that feeds back into team learning
• Partner closely with senior architects — executing within their technical direction while surfacing the team’s practical feedback to improve designs and standards
• Partner with Product Management on scope, sequencing, and tradeoffs for backend deliverables
• Keep the SVP informed with clear, honest reporting on delivery status, team health, risks, and capacity — escalating early and with options
• Represent the backend team in cross-functional planning with the front-end/configurator track, Security, Quality Engineering, and business stakeholders

Requirements:

• Proven track record building, developing, and retaining engineering teams — with specific evidence of growing individual engineers into stronger contributors and leaders
• Skilled at structured onboarding, mentorship, individualized development planning, and performance management delivered with candor and care
• Creates team cultures where feedback is normal, learning is continuous, and ownership is shared
• Solid grounding in modern server-side web application engineering — enough to review code and designs, coach engineers on craft, and earn the team's technical respect
• Comfortable working in a PHP/Symfony, MySQL, React, and AWS environment, or with a demonstrated history of quickly becoming credible in new stacks
• Understands modern engineering practices — CI/CD, automated testing, observability, secure development — well enough to teach and enforce them
• Runs disciplined, predictable delivery: planning, capacity management, dependency coordination, and clear status communication
• Balances delivery commitments with team development — protecting time for learning and quality rather than sacrificing them to the schedule
• Leads confidently while executing within strategy owned by the SVP and technical direction guided by senior architects — secure enough to follow direction well and to push back constructively when the team's experience warrants it
• Communicates clearly and honestly with engineers, architects, product partners, and executives; builds trust through transparency and consistency
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical discipline; equivalent combination of education and relevant experience will also be considered
• 8+ years of software engineering experience, including 4+ years directly leading, coaching, and developing software engineers on business-critical systems
• Demonstrated success growing engineering talent — onboarding programs, mentorship, promotions, or team members developed into leads
• Hands-on engineering background sufficient to review code and designs and coach on engineering craft
• Experience running disciplined Agile delivery across concurrent workstreams, with a track record of predictable execution
• Experience operating customer-facing production systems, including incident response and root-cause analysis practices
• Experience partnering effectively with Product Management, Architecture, and Security functions
• Experience with PHP/Symfony, MySQL, React, or AWS environments
• Experience leading blended contractor/employee teams, including vendor transitions or contractor-to-employee conversion
• Experience leading teams through legacy-system migration or platform modernization programs
• Domain exposure to e-commerce, product customization/configuration, order management, or order-to-production workflows
• Experience leading geographically distributed or remote engineering teams
• Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Business Administration, or a related field