Director, Software Engineering - Team Art Locker Platform

BSN SPORTS, A VARSITY BRANDS COMPANY - THE RECOGNIZED LEADER IN TEAM ATHLETIC GEAR
For over 50 years, BSN SPORTS has been the largest team sporting goods equipment and apparel distributor of choice in the United States. Our 3,000 BSN SPORTS employees strive to support the Heart of the Game by putting valuable time back into the day of coaches and administrators through excellent service platforms. Our company mission is simple: Save coaches and administrators time with everything they do off the field so they have more time to impact young lives on it.
LOCATION: Remote
TRAVEL: 10-15% (quarterly on-sites, team events)
HOW YOU WILL MAKE AN IMPACT:
BSN SPORTS, part of Varsity Brands, is replacing its legacy quote-and-order-entry tooling (QOE) with Team Art Locker (TAL) — a modern, web-facing platform that manages team art, uniform designs, templates, and their full production specifications for embroidery, screen print, and digital decoration. TAL is built on a PHP/Symfony service layer with React front ends, MySQL, and AWS, and is guided by our “One Creative Core, Many Front Doors” vision: design assets are managed once, in a single authoritative core, and made available to every channel that creates value.
The Director, Software Engineering leads and develops the backend engineering team that builds TAL and the creative core. Platform strategy and priorities are owned by the SVP, Specialized Applications & Platforms; technical direction and architectural patterns are guided by our senior architects. The Director’s mandate is to build the team that executes both well — growing engineers, establishing strong day-to-day engineering practices, and delivering committed work predictably and at high quality.
This is first and foremost a people-leadership role. The team is a deliberate mix of recently converted contractors and early-tenure hires, each with defined workstreams and real room to grow. The Director will invest heavily in coaching, mentorship, structured onboarding, and skill development — turning individual contributors into a cohesive, self-improving team — while maintaining the 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 — contractors successfully converted, new hires ramped quickly into defined workstreams, and engineers growing in skill and scope year over year
Consistent, high-quality execution of the platform roadmap — including the QOE→VOE and CC→VOE migrations — with predictable delivery against commitments
Day-to-day engineering practices (code review, testing, CI/CD, observability, secure development) that raise the floor of quality across everything the team ships
Effective translation of senior-architect guidance into working software — patterns adopted consistently, feedback flowing back constructively
Growing leadership depth on the team, with leads developing toward larger scope and clear succession paths
A team culture of ownership, learning, and collaboration that makes the platform organization stronger every 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 run structured onboarding that ramps new hires quickly into bounded workstream ownership, and support recently converted contractors through the transition to internal roles
Create individualized development plans, mentorship pairings, and growth paths for every engineer; develop Lead Software Engineers toward larger scope and build succession depth
Foster an inclusive culture of ownership, learning, collaboration, and continuous improvement
Engineering Practice & Craft Development
Establish, teach, and continuously reinforce day-to-day engineering practices: code review, automated testing, CI/CD, observability, documentation, and secure development habits
Build the team’s learning loops — design review forums, pairing, tech talks, and shared standards — so knowledge spreads rather than siloing in individuals
Translate the patterns, standards, and technical direction set by senior architects into the team’s daily work, and ensure they are adopted consistently
Champion software quality and security practices in partnership with Architecture, Security, and Quality Engineering
Delivery Execution
Lead day-to-day delivery of backend workstreams — including the QOE→VOE and CC→VOE migrations, core services, and API work — against priorities set by the SVP
Run disciplined planning and execution rhythms: sprint planning, capacity management, dependency coordination, and removal of blockers
Monitor delivery health and quality, and drive continuous improvements that make delivery more predictable quarter over quarter
Ensure operational discipline: production support habits, incident response, and blameless root-cause analysis that feeds back into team learning
Partnership & Communication
Partner closely with senior architects — executing within their technical direction while surfacing the team’s practical feedback to improve designs and standards
Partner with Product Management on scope, sequencing, and tradeoffs for backend deliverables
Keep the SVP informed with clear, honest reporting on delivery status, team health, risks, and capacity — escalating early and with options
Represent the backend team in cross-functional planning with the front-end/configurator track, 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 building, developing, and retaining engineering teams — with specific evidence of growing individual engineers into stronger contributors and leaders
Skilled at structured onboarding, mentorship, individualized development planning, and performance management delivered with candor and care
Creates team cultures where feedback is normal, learning is continuous, and ownership is shared
Technical Credibility
Solid grounding in modern server-side web application engineering — enough 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 stacks
Understands modern engineering practices —