VP of Commerce Platform Transformation

corpfollettexternal; Westchester (IL); On-site; USD 250,000 - 400,000; Full time

Job summary

Follett Higher Education is seeking a VP of Engineering, Commerce Platform to lead architecture and delivery of ecommerce and POS systems, including migrating from legacy technology to Shopify.

You will own technical strategy, build a high-performing team across App Dev, QA, and DevOps, and partner with the SVP Ecommerce to align roadmaps with business goals while elevating security and reliability.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in related field or equivalent.
• 12-15+ years in software engineering, including 5-7+ years in senior engineering leadership (Director, VP, or Head of Engineering).
• Direct ecommerce software engineering experience, having built or scaled systems for online storefronts, checkout, cart, or order management.
• Proven experience leading a legacy-to-modern platform migration.
• Expert fluency in modern web technology and architecture patterns.
• Experience owning DevOps/CI-CD and QA functions as part of an engineering organization.
• Demonstrated track record of building engineering teams with a strong culture of ownership.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end architecture for ecommerce and POS systems, including the transition from legacy stack to Shopify.
• Set technical direction and make final architecture calls across the environment, driving toward the organization's go-forward technology stack.
• Act as the subject-matter expert across the modern ecommerce technology stack, including loyalty programs, promotions and pricing engines, and analytics/personalization platforms, to inform architecture decisions that scale across the Follett store network.
• Maintain technical standards and architectural integrity across the engineering organization.
• Lead Application Development, QA, and DevOps teams, setting delivery standards and technical practices across all three functions.
• Ensure platform performance, instrumentation, scalability, reliability, and availability to meet the needs of the business and its institutional and student customers.
• Drive modern engineering practices appropriate to the team's scale and maturity.
• Own technology lifecycle decisions, including system upgrades, platform migrations, and modernization efforts within ecommerce and POS.
• Partner closely with the SVP of Ecommerce on roadmap sequencing, tradeoffs, and prioritization, co-owning outcomes while maintaining clear decision rights between technical execution and business/product ownership.
• Work across engineering, sales, institutional partners, and operations to balance platform modernization with ongoing academic-calendar-driven operational needs.
• Serve as the technical voice in cross-functional planning for ecommerce and POS initiatives.
• Build, mentor, and retain a high-performing engineering organization across App Dev, QA, and DevOps.
• Foster a culture of ownership, where teams partner with product and leadership to own outcomes rather than only executing requirements.
• Establish clear performance expectations and growth paths for engineering leaders and their teams.
• Raise the bar for technical hiring across the organization.
• Ensure secure development and deployment practices are embedded in engineering workflows, in partnership with the separate security/compliance function that owns security overall.
• Maintain working knowledge of data privacy and security considerations relevant to ecommerce and POS systems to inform architecture decisions.

Skills

Ecommerce architecture

Engineering leadership

DevOps/CI-CD

Web technologies

Cross-functional collaboration

Security practices

Education

Bachelor's degree in related field

Master's degree (preferred)

Tools

Shopify

CI/CD tooling

Security tooling

Job description

Follett Higher Education is seeking a VP of Engineering, Commerce Platform to lead architecture and delivery of ecommerce and POS systems, including migrating from legacy technology to Shopify.

You will own technical strategy, build a high-performing team across App Dev, QA, and DevOps, and partner with the SVP Ecommerce to align roadmaps with business goals while elevating security and reliability.