Senior Software Engineer - Data and AI Platforms

Hbcu Connect, Llc; Washington; On-site; USD 147,000 - 193,000; Full time

Job summary

lululemon is expanding its Enterprise Data & AI team. We seek a Senior Software Engineer to design data systems, AI-enabled platforms, and enterprise solutions that serve multiple product teams.

You will influence architecture, drive best practices, and mentor engineers across the domain. You will collaborate with product and business stakeholders on technical strategy, handle incident responses, and participate in on-call rotations as needed.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS or related field; MS beneficial or equivalent experience.
• 6–10 years in software development with complex systems.
• Proven ability to set coding standards and architecture across teams.
• Experience designing enterprise semantic layers and integration patterns.

Responsibilities

• Design and build data systems and AI-enabled platform capabilities.
• Drive architectural patterns for enterprise knowledge modeling and APIs.
• Mentor engineers and lead cross-team technical initiatives.
• Establish engineering standards, testing, and deployment practices.
• Partner with product and business stakeholders on roadmaps.

Skills

Senior software engineering

System design

Problem decomposition

AI/ML knowledge

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Master's degree beneficial or equivalent experience

Tools

RAG/GraphRAG

Embeddings

Semantic search

Job description

Who we are

lululemon is an innovative performance apparel company for yoga, running, training, and other athletic pursuits. Setting the bar in technical fabrics and functional design, we create transformational products and experiences that support people in moving, growing, connecting, and being well. We owe our success to our innovative product, emphasis on stores, commitment to our people, and the incredible connections we make in every community we're in. As a company, we focus on creating positive change to build a healthier, thriving future. In particular, that includes creating an equitable, inclusive and growth-focused environment for our people.

About this team

The Enterprise Data & AI team is a strategic and operational driver of growth for lululemon, owning and building the data and AI platforms and products that enable the enterprise to operate with intelligence at scale. The team leads the design and delivery of a trusted unified data foundation, advanced analytics capabilities, and AI solutions across lululemon's vertically integrated retail ecosystem, embedding strong data governance and responsible AI practices from the very beginning. By applying AI to critical business challenges and creating new, transformative AI solutions, the team helps reshape how lululemon operates. Through deep partnership with product, technology, and business teams, Enterprise Data & AI accelerates product innovation, unlocks measurable value, elevates guest and educator experiences, and drives enterprise efficiency.

Core responsibilities

As a Senior Software Engineer, you will design and build data systems, AI-enabled platform capabilities, and enterprise solutions that support multiple product teams, contributing to architectural patterns for how enterprise knowledge is modeled, connected, and consumed. You will work at the intersection of Data (logical and semantic), AI/LLM retrieval and grounding, and distributed systems and APIs.

You will drive technical decisions with broad impact across multiple teams including architecture patterns and technology selections, conduct high-impact code reviews focusing on system design and long-term maintainability, and establish engineering standards and best practices adopted across the domain including testing strategies and deployment procedures.

You will mentor engineers at multiple levels providing guidance on advanced technical concepts and career development, partner with product and business stakeholders on technical strategy and roadmap planning, and represent engineering perspective in cross-functional initiatives while leading incident response for critical production issues. This role may require availability outside of standard business hours, including on call support, based on business needs.

Select responsibilities include:

• Contribute to and help evolve canonical semantic models (taxonomies, ontologies, knowledge graphs) for enterprise domains such as product, customer, and supply chain
• Build and maintain systems that provide high-quality context for LLMs, including Retrieval pipelines (RAG / GraphRAG), Semantic search (embeddings, hybrid search), and evidence-based reasoning layers
• Collaborate with AI/ML Science teams to validate model correctness, reduce hallucination risk, and improve trust in AI-generated outputs
• Identify and address challenges of data ambiguity, duplication, and inconsistencies through data validation, schema governance, and versioning practices
• Lead implementation of complex systems and features spanning multiple services within established architectural frameworks and make decisions with minimal supervision
• Write exemplary code demonstrating engineering best practices in critical systems as technical reference for teams
• Establish and enforce coding standards, testing practices, and engineering best practices across multiple teams in domain
• Provide technical input and implementation perspectives to architects on system design and integration approaches
• Lead code quality and design reviews across teams ensuring technical alignment with organizational standards

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related technical field; Master's degree beneficial, or equivalent experience
• 6-10 years of software development experience, building complex systems and driving technical initiatives across teams, or equivalent
• Proven track record of writing exemplary code that serves as a technical reference; experience establishing coding standards and quality practices adopted across a domain
• Demonstrated ability to decompose highly complex problems including algorithmic challenges into scalable solutions; deep understanding of system-wide implications of technical decisions across multiple services
• Experience designing integration solutions for complex domain areas; track record of driving integration implementation decisions across teams within architectural standards
• Experience building knowledge bases in retail or similar domains
• Familiarity with search, recommender and RAG/GraphRAG hybrid retrieval architectures
• Experience defining enterprise semantic layers used across multiple product teams
• Exposure to AI-Driven systems - optimization, predictions and Agents
• Experience working with knowledge representation for LLM-powered applications

additional notes

Please note: Applicants must be authorized to work for ANY employer in the U.S. We are unable to sponsor or take over sponsorship of employment visa at this time for this role.

compensation and benefits package

lululemon's compensation offerings are grounded in a pay-for-performance philosophy that recognizes exceptional individual and team performance. The typical hiring range for this position is from $147,300 - $193,300 annually; the base pay offered is based on market location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and internal equity. As part of our total rewards offering, permanent employees in this position may be eligible for our competitive annual bonus program, subject to program eligibility requirements.