Head of POS Engineering — Cloud-Native Retail Platform

Petco; San Antonio (TX); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Petco, a leading pet retailer, seeks a Director of POS Engineering to lead the technology powering millions of customer interactions. You will define the engineering vision for the Point of Sale ecosystem and drive modernization across POS applications and supporting systems.

You will collaborate with Product leadership to align roadmaps with business strategy and build scalable, secure, and highly available retail technology.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering or related fields, or equivalent work experience.
• 12+ years of IT and business industry work experience in managing multiple, large, cross-functional teams or projects, and influencing senior level management and key stakeholders.
• Advanced technical and business knowledge in software development life cycle, quality assurance, project management and related disciplines/processes.
• Proven experience leading engineering teams responsible for enterprise Point of Sale (POS) platforms.
• Experience delivering large-scale, highly available retail or commerce technology initiatives.
• Strong understanding of omnichannel retail architecture and customer commerce experiences.
• Experience with payment processing, payment gateways, loyalty platforms, and PCI compliance principles.
• Experience partnering with Product Management to define roadmaps and prioritize engineering investments.
• Demonstrated success leading geographically distributed engineering teams across onshore, offshore, and nearshore delivery models.
• Strong executive presence with experience influencing Directors, Vice Presidents, and senior business leaders.

Responsibilities

• Define and execute the long-term engineering strategy and technical roadmap for Petco’s Point of Sale ecosystem.
• Drive modernization initiatives across POS applications, commerce services, and supporting retail systems.
• Lead the architecture and delivery of scalable, resilient, cloud-enabled solutions that support thousands of stores and millions of customer interactions.
• Partner with Product leaders to translate business strategy into innovative technical solutions that improve customer and associate experiences.
• Champion engineering excellence through modern software development practices, automation, observability, and continuous delivery.
• Oversee ongoing platform enhancements while balancing innovation, stability, security, and operational excellence.
• Provide technical leadership for complex enterprise initiatives involving multiple systems and business stakeholders.
• Identify technology opportunities that improve speed, reliability, scalability, and the overall retail experience.
• Lead and develop distributed engineering teams while fostering a collaborative, high-performing engineering culture.
• Communicate technology strategy, priorities, and execution updates to Directors, Vice Presidents, and other senior business leaders.

Skills

Java

Spring Boot

Microservices

GraphQL

Kafka

AWS

Linux/Windows

CI/CD

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering or related fields

Tools

AWS Cloud Services

Kubernetes

Docker

GraphQL APIs

Job description

Petco, a leading pet retailer, seeks a Director of POS Engineering to lead the technology powering millions of customer interactions. You will define the engineering vision for the Point of Sale ecosystem and drive modernization across POS applications and supporting systems.

You will collaborate with Product leadership to align roadmaps with business strategy and build scalable, secure, and highly available retail technology.