Senior Lead Software Engineer

About VU Custom

VU Custom (www.vucustom.com) enables premium brands to offer custom and personalized products to their customers — integrated seamlessly with eCommerce platforms and backend systems. Our clients include Vera Bradley, BruMate, Taylormade Golf, Chaco Sandals, Bauer Hockey, and more.

VU OS — our modern operating system for custom product programs — simplifies the complexity of customization, from digital personalization through production, fulfillment, and order management.

_________________________________

The Role

We’re looking for a Senior Lead Software Engineer who is not only technically excellent, but also pragmatic — someone who will be a trusted right-hand to the CTO while directly contributing to the health, quality, and scalability of our platform.

This role is critical to both product development and client implementation success. You will work directly with engineers, implementation specialists, and leadership to solve technical challenges, maintain a healthy codebase, and ensure client data can be effectively integrated into our system. Additionally, the role will be client-facing at times, representing the engineering team and technical concepts to the key stakeholders of our clients.

You will lead by example — unblocking teams, improving engineering practices, and helping drive the execution of reliable, scalable features while maintaining a sharp focus on data quality and system integrity.

_____________________________________

Responsibilities

Engineering & Technical Leadership

• Serve as the team’s go-to technical expert — solve complex Rails and JavaScript problems, especially where others get stuck.
• Guide implementation teams to develop clean, scalable, and client-safe customizations on top of the VU OS platform.
• Partner with the CTO and senior staff on architectural decisions, with a focus on balancing client flexibility and core system maintainability.
• Enforce strong development practices, including trunk-based development, feature flagging, peer reviews, and continuous integration.
• Directly participate in development efforts, especially for challenging or business-critical work.
• Work with TPM and requirements to ensure that tasks are adequately written.

Data Stewardship

• Collaborate with Implementation teams to develop systems and processes for managing, transforming, and integrating client master data (materials, catalogs, pricing, etc.) into VU OS.
• Help design and maintain pipelines or tooling to validate, clean, and normalize client-provided data for production use.
• Support production data corrections and sensitive operations when issues occur in live environments.
• Be a technical leader for ensuring client-specific data workflows do not degrade platform performance or reliability.

Deployment & Environments

• Assist in maintaining and improving our existing CI/CD pipeline (GitHub Actions) and automated deployment processes.
• Ensure smooth operation of Dev, QA, Staging, and Production environments.
• Provide hypercare support during releases and major client go-lives.

Team Development & Support

• Be a strong technical mentor for engineers of varying levels.
• Work in the trenches alongside the development team to ensure quality execution
• Act as the first line of escalation for the development team before involving the CTO.
• Adeptly represent VU Custom and the Engineering team in client-facing interactions.
• Help the team improve both day-to-day development practices and long-term engineering maturity.
• Act as a technical partner to Implementation, Product, and Customer Success teams during client onboarding and ongoing support.

____________________________________

What We’re Looking For

• 7+ years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years of technical leadership.
• Expert skills in Ruby on Rails and JavaScript (React or equivalent framework).
• Strong understanding of modern engineering practices:
• Trunk-based development
• Feature flags
• CI/CD pipelines
• Automated testing
• Experience working with production data, client-supplied data, and designing internal data-handling workflows.
• Familiarity with ERP systems, product catalogs, or consumer product order management systems is strongly preferred.
• Comfortable working in a client-facing role when needed, especially during critical hypercare periods.
• Excellent communicator and mentor.

___________________________________

Why VU Custom?

• Influence: You will help shape the product, engineering team, and the success of the company.
• Ownership: Take the lead on technical decisions, quality enforcement, and helping the team deliver their best work.
• Growth: We’re scaling — fast. Your contributions will have a direct impact.
• Collaboration: Work directly with senior leadership, including the CTO, to drive meaningful change.
• Benefits: Competitive salary, benefits, and an opportunity to make a real difference.

_____________________________________

Compensation: Salary and discretionary bonus commensurate with experience, plus a competitive benefits package. Applicants from states with pay transparency laws may email julie.love@vucustom.com for more detailed information.

Schedule: This is a full-time, exempt position with flexible working hours, but must be able to collaborate closely with the CTO in New Jersey.

_____________________________________

Application and Nomination: Review of applications will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. To apply for this position, please apply via LinkedIn, or email a position-specific cover letter and resume to Julie.Love@vucustom.com. Nominations may be emailed to the same email address. Applicants needing reasonable accommodation to participate in the application process should also contact Julie Love.

VU Custom is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, veteran status, or age.