Innovation Tech Lead

Coca-Cola HBC; Atlanta (GA); On-site; USD 202,000 - 229,000; Full time

Job summary

The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta is seeking a Technical Lead to shape the end-to-end technical vision and architecture for a priority domain across global digital products. Lead the engineering teams, collaborate with Product leadership, and ensure delivery of scalable, secure AI-powered solutions.

You will align with enterprise standards, balance trade-offs, and drive continuous improvement across data pipelines, APIs, and ML components while maintaining high engineering practices.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software engineering, data engineering, or leadership.
• Experience building and scaling enterprise platforms with ML in production.

Responsibilities

• Define and communicate the technical vision and roadmap for the domain.
• Lead day-to-day engineering delivery and mentor the team.
• Guide secure, scalable, production-ready AI/ML capabilities.

Skills

Python

Cloud architectures

Data engineering

ML/AI models

REST/GraphQL

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in CS/Engineering

Tools

Azure

Job description

Job Description Summary: Role overview

We are seeking a Technical Lead to define and drive the end-to-end technical vision, architecture, and delivery for a priority business domain and its portfolio of enterprise digital products within The Coca-Cola Company's global Digital organization. This is a high-impact, highly visible role at the intersection of software engineering, data science, machine learning, and product delivery. You will serve as the senior-most technical voice for the priority product domain and act as a strategic thought partner to Product Leadership and senior business stakeholders, as well as leading the day-to-day work. The ideal candidate is a seasoned engineering leader who combines deep technical depth with judgment and communication skills to translate strategic product decisions into direction for engineers. You have built and scaled enterprise platforms in cloud environments, are fluent in modern data architecture, and know what it takes to take AI-powered products from concept to global enterprise deployment.

What You'll Do for Us

• Strategic leadership: define and communicate the technical vision, architecture principles, and engineering roadmap for the priority domain, ensuring alignment with business objectives.
• Make key technical trade-off decisions that balance speed, scalability, maintainability, and long-term platform health.
• Technical delivery and resourcing: own the technical backlog for the priority domain and direct the day-to-day resourcing and capacity of the engineers supporting it. Prioritize technical work, assign engineers to initiatives, balance capacity across competing priorities, and ensure delivery commitments remain on track while proactively identifying and mitigating delivery risks.
• Day-to-day team leadership: provide technical leadership to the engineering team by setting clear direction, facilitating technical design discussions, conducting code reviews, and promoting engineering best practices. Remove technical blockers, foster collaboration across teams, support engineers in solving complex challenges, and cultivate a culture of continuous learning, accountability, and high engineering standards.
• Technical implementation: guide the design and implementation of technology solutions across the priority domain, ensuring engineering teams deliver secure, scalable, and production-ready applications, services, APIs, data pipelines, and AI/ML capabilities in accordance with enterprise architecture and engineering standards.
• Collaboration: serve as the cross-squad technical integration point for Analytics, Data and ML, Application Engineering, MLOps, and DevOps squads, resolving dependencies and unblocking delivery.
• Partner closely with the Product Manager as the technical counterpart for the domain, translating the product roadmap and priorities into sound technical plans and jointly owning trade-offs between scope, speed, and technical quality.
• Operational reliability: champion engineering best practices by driving code quality, testing, observability, security, performance, and operational resilience. Use engineering metrics and production insights to continuously improve system reliability, scalability, and developer productivity as products expand across markets.

Requirements & Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, data engineering, or technical leadership roles
• Demonstrated experience building and scaling enterprise platforms that incorporate ML models in production, ideally in cloud-native environments (Azure strongly preferred; AWS or GCP acceptable)
• Deep fluency across the modern data and ML stack: data pipeline architecture, ML model training and serving infrastructure, MLOps practices, and CI/CD for both software and ML components
• Strong software engineering foundation including hands‑on experience with Python, familiarity with front-end and back-end application architecture (React, REST/GraphQL APIs, microservices), and code review proficiency
• Proven ability to lead technical integration across multiple parallel engineering workstreams, managing dependencies, resolving architectural conflicts, and maintaining delivery velocity
• Track record of communicating technical architecture and trade‑offs to senior non‑technical stakeholders, including VP and C‑suite audiences
• Experience writing and reviewing production‑grade code; comfort going hands‑on when squads need it
• Demonstrated willingness to remain hands‑on when it matters most, rolling up your sleeves to tackle complex challenges while coaching others to deliver at a high standard
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building platforms for global, multi-market deployment including data permissioning architecture and regional data governance considerations
• Exposure to AI and generative AI platform architecture, including evaluation and deployment of generative AI components for enterprise use cases
• Background in Consumer Packaged Goods, retail, or marketing analytics environments

The Coca-Cola Company will not offer sponsorship for employment status (including, but not limited to, H1-B visa status and other employment-based nonimmigrant visas)

Accordingly, all applicants must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full‑time basis and must not require The Coca-Cola Company's sponsorship to continue to work legally in the United States.

Skills:

Agile Methodology, Application Development, Budgeting, Business Processes, Business Value Creation, Change Management, Decision Making, Financial Forecasting, Leadership, Long Term Planning, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Office, Negotiation, Process Improvements, Risk Assessments, Risk Management, Software Development, Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), Strategic Alignment, Strategic IT, Structured Query Language (SQL), Vendor Management, Waterfall Model

Pay Range:

United States: 202,000 - 229,000 USD Base pay offered may vary depending on geography, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. A full range of medical, financial, and/or other benefits, dependent on the position, is offered.

Location(s): United States of America

City/Cities: Atlanta

Travel Required: 00% - 25%

Relocation Provided: No

Job Posting End Date: September 18, 2026

Our Purpose and Growth Culture:

We are taking deliberate action to nurture an inclusive culture that is grounded in our company purpose, to refresh the world and make a difference. We act with a growth mindset, take an expansive approach to what’s possible and believe in continuous learning to improve our business and ourselves. We focus on four key behaviors - curious, empowered, inclusive and agile - and value how we work as much as what we achieve. We believe that our culture is one of the reasons our company continues to thrive after 130+ years. Visit Our Purpose and Vision to learn more about these behaviors and how you can bring them to life in your next role at Coca-Cola. We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and do not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, sex, age, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, status as a veteran, and basis of disability or any other federal, state or local protected class. When we collect your personal information as part of a job application or offer of employment, we do so in accordance with industry standards and best practices and in compliance with applicable privacy laws. The Coca-Cola Company is a global community of passionate employees who are refreshing the world and making a difference every day. Innovation has been at the heart of our story since 1886. It goes beyond new flavors and brands. Learn more about our system and how we’re making an impact. As a global organization, we seek opportunities to embrace and champion progress. Our careers span across functions and are globally connected to give you an unmatched career experience. We’re glad you’ve chosen to explore your next career opportunity with The Coca-Cola Company. Learn more about our hiring process and pick up tips on how to showcase your experience and skills so you can stand out and thrive. The Coca-Cola global business system is composed of The Coca-Cola Company (TCCC), its subsidiaries and 225 bottling partners around the world. Search jobs throughout our system.