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 — CI/CD, automated testing, observability, secure development — well enough to teach and enforce them
Delivery Management
- Runs disciplined, predictable delivery: 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 the schedule
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; 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 growing engineering talent — onboarding programs, mentorship, promotions, or team members developed into leads
- 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
Physical Demands and/or Work Environment
- 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.
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.
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