Director, Software Engineering - Team Art Locker Platform

BSN SPORTS, a Varsity Brands Company, stands as the recognized leader in team athletic gear. For over 50 years, BSN SPORTS has been the premier distributor of team sporting goods equipment and apparel in the United States. Our 3,000 dedicated employees are committed to supporting the Heart of the Game by providing excellent service platforms, giving valuable time back to coaches and administrators. Our mission is clear: to save coaches and administrators time on off-field tasks, allowing them more time to positively impact young lives on the field.

LOCATION: Remote

TRAVEL: 10-15% (quarterly on-sites, team events)

HOW YOU WILL MAKE AN IMPACT

BSN SPORTS, a division of Varsity Brands, is modernizing its legacy quote-and-order-entry (QOE) system with Team Art Locker (TAL). TAL is a cutting-edge, web-facing platform designed to manage team art, uniform designs, templates, and comprehensive production specifications for embroidery, screen print, and digital decoration. Built on a robust PHP/Symfony service layer with React front ends, MySQL, and AWS, TAL embodies our "One Creative Core, Many Front Doors" vision. This ensures design assets are managed centrally in a single authoritative core, accessible across all value-generating channels.

The Director, Software Engineering will lead and develop the backend engineering team responsible for building TAL and the creative core. While platform strategy and priorities are set by the SVP, Specialized Applications & Platforms, and technical direction is guided by senior architects, the Director's primary mandate is to build and empower the team to execute these initiatives effectively. This includes fostering engineer growth, establishing robust day-to-day engineering practices, and ensuring predictable, high-quality delivery of committed work.

This role is fundamentally a people-leadership position. The team comprises a strategic mix of recently converted contractors and early-tenure hires, each with defined workstreams and significant growth potential. The Director will heavily invest in coaching, mentorship, structured onboarding, and skill development, transforming individual contributors into a cohesive, self-improving team. This requires maintaining technical credibility to review work, teach by example, and translate architectural guidance into daily practice.

Impact of the Role

Through people-first engineering leadership, this role will deliver:

• A cohesive, durable backend engineering team, with successful contractor conversions, rapid onboarding of new hires into defined workstreams, and year-over-year growth in engineer skills and scope.
• Consistent, high-quality execution of the platform roadmap, including the QOE VOE and CC VOE migrations, with predictable delivery against commitments.
• Strong day-to-day engineering practices (code review, testing, CI/CD, observability, secure development) that elevate the overall quality of team deliverables.
• Effective translation of senior architect guidance into working software, ensuring consistent adoption of patterns and constructive feedback loops.
• Growing leadership depth within the team, with leads developing toward larger scope and clear succession paths.
• A team culture of ownership, continuous learning, and collaboration that strengthens the platform organization each quarter.

WHAT YOU WILL DO

Team Leadership & Talent Development

• Build, coach, develop, and retain a high-performing backend engineering team; set clear expectations and provide continuous, candid, growth-oriented feedback.
• Design and implement structured onboarding programs that quickly integrate new hires into bounded workstream ownership, and support recently converted contractors through their transition to internal roles.
• Create individualized development plans, mentorship pairings, and clear growth paths for every engineer; develop Lead Software Engineers toward expanded scope and build succession depth.
• Foster an inclusive culture of ownership, continuous learning, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

Engineering Practice & Craft Development

• Establish, teach, and consistently reinforce essential day-to-day engineering practices: code review, automated testing, CI/CD, observability, documentation, and secure development habits.
• Build the team’s learning loops through design review forums, pairing sessions, tech talks, and shared standards to promote knowledge sharing and prevent siloing.
• Translate the patterns, standards, and technical direction set by senior architects into the team’s daily work, ensuring consistent adoption.
• Champion software quality and security practices in close partnership with Architecture, Security, and Quality Engineering teams.

Delivery Execution

• Lead the day-to-day delivery of backend workstreams, including the QOE VOE and CC VOE migrations, core services, and API development, aligned with priorities set by the SVP.
• Implement disciplined planning and execution rhythms: sprint planning, capacity management, dependency coordination, and proactive blocker removal.
• Monitor delivery health and quality, driving continuous improvements to enhance delivery predictability quarter over quarter.
• Ensure operational discipline, including robust production support habits, efficient incident response, and blameless root-cause analysis that informs team learning.

Partnership & Communication

• Partner closely with senior architects, executing within their technical direction while providing practical team feedback to refine designs and standards.
• Collaborate with Product Management on scope definition, sequencing, and tradeoffs for backend deliverables.
• Keep the SVP informed with clear, honest reporting on delivery status, team health, risks, and capacity, escalating issues early with proposed solutions.
• Represent the backend team in cross-functional planning with front-end/configurator tracks, Security, Quality Engineering, and business stakeholders.

Key Performance Indicators

Success in this role will be measured through:

• Team Health: Retention and engagement of the backend team, successful stabilization of converted contractors, and new-hire ramp time to independent workstream ownership.
• Talent Growth: Measurable skill and scope progression across the team, lead development, and succession readiness.
• Delivery Predictability: Committed-versus-delivered performance across planning cycles, including scheduled migration milestones on the platform roadmap.
• Engineering Practice Adoption: Code review coverage, test coverage trends, CI/CD maturity, and consistency of standards across the team’s output.
• Operational Stability: Production incident trends, response quality, and evidence of learning from root-cause analysis.
• Partner Feedback: Confidence from the SVP, senior architects, and Product Management in the team’s execution and communication.

QUALIFICATIONS

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities

People Leadership & Coaching

• Proven track record of building, developing, and retaining high-performing engineering teams, with specific evidence of growing individual engineers into stronger contributors and leaders.
• Skilled in structured onboarding, mentorship, individualized development planning, and performance management delivered with candor and care.
• Ability to create team cultures where feedback is normalized, learning is continuous, and ownership is shared.

Technical Credibility

• Solid grounding in modern server-side web application engineering, sufficient 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 technology stacks.
• Understands modern engineering practices, including CI/CD, automated testing, observability, and secure development, well enough to teach and enforce them.

Delivery Management

• Runs disciplined, predictable delivery processes: 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 meet schedules.

Collaboration & Judgment

• 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.

Education, Certification and Experience

Required

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical discipline; an 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 in growing engineering talent through onboarding programs, mentorship, promotions, or developing team members into leadership roles.
• 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.

Preferred

• 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.

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities required of the employee for this job.

OUR VALUES

• Service - We lead with heart. We champion community.
• Passion - We love what we do. It fuels our purpose.
• Integrity - We do what we promise. We own our actions and decisions.
• Respect - We earn it by giving it. Because everyone deserves it.
• Innovation - We never stop striving to be better. For ourselves and our community.
• Transparency - We are committed to openness and honesty in everything we do.

OUR BENEFITS

We are committed to putting you and your families first. For benefits eligible roles, we offer a variety of choices and costs as well as program enhancements that align with our responsibility to elevate the employee experience. Some of our offerings include:

• Comprehensive Health Care Benefits
• HSA Employer Contribution/ FSA Opportunities
• Wellbeing Program
• 401(k) plan with company matching
• Company paid Life, AD&D, and Short-Term Disability
• Generous My Time Off & Paid Holidays
• Varsity Brands Ownership Program
• Employee Resource Groups
• Access to Financial Coaching and member-owned Credit Union
• St. Jude Partnership & Volunteer Opportunities
• Employee Perks including discounts on personal apparel and equipment!

Eligibility for company-sponsored benefits is determined by scheduled work hours, and the terms of the applicable benefit plans. Benefit offerings and eligibility requirements may vary by position and are subject to change in accordance with plan documents and applicable law.

Varsity Brands companies are equal opportunity employers. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, citizenship, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran’s status, age or disability.