Lead Engineer - Back End Development

Lead Engineer

Live the experience. From professional empowerment to continual learning opportunities. From ongoing investment in new and emerging technologies to a career of self-determination. At Ulta Beauty, our tech team is critical to our scalability—and is recognized that way. We’ve been defined as a “mature start-up.” A place where interdepartmental exposure, open doors, and genuine collaboration is ubiquitous. Where challenges come fast and furious, requiring agility, mental dexterity, and creativity. Where our passion for better solutions drives us and is core to who we are.

We’re engineering for the future of retail, and it’s no-holds-barred. But for those motivated by continual change and ambiguity, by superior leadership, by whip smart colleagues who will press you daily for your very best, you’ll find that virtually nothing’s impossible at Ulta Beauty.

Ulta Beauty’s Consumer Technology organization is seeking a passionate, hands-on Lead Engineer to drive next-generation digital commerce experiences. This role sits at the intersection of engineering excellence and intelligent automation - leading a high-performing team to design, build, and scale modern, cloud-native applications that power Ulta’s eCommerce and omnichannel experiences.

You will be both a builder and a mentor, ensuring technical rigor while helping evolve our SDLC through AI-powered developer tools, intelligent code generation, and automation-first engineering culture.

You’ll accomplish these goals by:

• Design & Delivery Excellence - Translate business and product requirements into robust low-level designs, ensuring scalability, observability, and reliability with high code quality while providing technical leadership to the development team and mentoring team members.
• AI-Driven Engineering Enablement - Enable and scale adoption of emerging tools that enhance developer productivity through AI (e.g., code generation, automated test creation, pair programming assistants, code review copilots, etc.).
• Cross-Functional Collaboration - Partner with Architects, Product, QA, and SRE teams to deliver business-critical features and technical foundations.
• Thought Leadership - Stay current with AI, DevOps, and cloud-native trends. Contribute to architectural direction, technical proof-of-concepts, and developer enablement initiatives.
• Problem Solving & Performance Tuning - Investigate production and performance issues, execute root-cause analyses, and lead rapid, sustainable resolutions
• Rapid Prototyping & POCs - Drive quick proof-of-concepts to test new architecture patterns. Evaluate outcomes, share learnings, and recommend adoption for broader engineering use.

Essentials for success:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field (or equivalent experience).
• 10+ years of experience in software development, with 3+ years in a technical lead
• Deep expertise in Java 17+, Spring Boot, reactive programming, and MACH-aligned architectures (microservices, API-first, cloud-native, headless).
• Strong experience of event-driven architectures and messaging (Google Pub/Sub or similar) and streaming (Kafka or similar) systems.
• Proven experience delivering large-scale, customer-facing, cloud-native systems (preferably on Google Cloud Platform).
• Familiarity with Tooling & Platforms: JUnit 5, Mockito, Testcontainers; SonarQube and code quality gates; OpenAPI 3.0 (design-first, Swagger UI), contract testing (Pact); observability with Dynatrace/New Relic and OpenTelemetry; performance/memory profiling (JFR, Eclipse MAT, JProfiler); streaming with Kafka (producers/consumers, schemas). Or equivalent tools.
• Hands-on experience with NoSQL (MongoDB, Redis) and relational databases.
• Familiarity with AI-assisted development tools such as Gemini Code assist or similar
• Working knowledge of GIT / Bitbucket repository or any similar version repository experience
• Working Knowledge of Prisma vulnerabilities.
• Passion for learning new technologies and eagerness to collaborate with other creative minds.
• Strong collaboration, communication, and mentoring skills.
• Exposure to GraphQL, Node.js, or React.js for end-to-end solutioning is a plus

Nice-to-have:

• Experience with Amplience CMS, Commercetools, or other headless commerce systems.
• Working knowledge of GKE and containerized workloads.
• Background in the retail or eCommerce domain with emphasis on digital experience engineering.
• Solution architecture experience or certification.

The pay range for this position is $102,900.00 - $155,000.00 / Year with the opportunity for eligible associates to earn additional compensation pursuant to the Company's bonus plan. Exact pay will be based on factors including, but not limited to relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, level, shift, geographic location, and business and organizational needs. Full-time positions are eligible for paid time off, health, dental, vision, life and disability benefits. Part-time positions are eligible for dental, vision, life, and disability benefits.

At Ulta Beauty (NASDAQ: ULTA), the possibilities are beautiful. Ulta Beauty is the largest North American beauty retailer and the premier beauty destination for cosmetics, fragrance, skin care products, hair care products and salon services. We bring possibilities to life through the power of beauty each and every day in our stores and online with more than 25,000 products from approximately 500 well-established and emerging beauty brands across all categories and price points, including Ulta Beauty’s own private label. Ulta Beauty also offers a full-service salon in every store featuring—hair, skin, brow, and make-up services.

We will consider for employment all qualified applicants, including those with arrest records, conviction records, or other criminal histories, in a manner consistent with the requirements of any applicable state and local laws, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance, the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, and the New York City Fair Chance Act.