Staff Software Engineer - Data & AI Platforms

Who we are:

Founded in 1998 at Vancouver, lululemon is a performance and lifestyle product company that create transformational products and experiences that build meaningful connections, unlocking greater possibility and wellbeing for all. We are driven by our brand purpose to elevate human potential by making individuals feel their best which helps us design our products with high filter and high style. We use a unique product creation methodology called Science of Feel in all our products to offer convenient, comfortable, and long-lasting experience.

We owe our success to our innovative products, commitment to our people, and the incredible connections we make in every community we're in.

Core responsibilities:

As a Staff Software Engineer, you will design and deliver data systems, AI-enabled platform capabilities,enterprise solutions and technical frameworks that span multiple teams,establishing architectural patterns for how enterprise knowledge is modeled, connected, and consumed. You will operate at the intersection of Data (logical and semantic), AI/LLM retrieval and grounding, anddistributed systems and APIs.You will consult on architectural decisions in collaboration with enterprise architects providing technical expertise on system design, balance hands-on coding in critical areas with advisory responsibilities across teams,and ensure technical solutions deliver measurable business value. You will mentor engineers at all levels including emerging technical leaders, identify and resolve critical engineering challenges spanning multiple systems, and drive initiatives that improvedeveloper productivity, code quality, and system reliability at organizational scale.

This role may require availability outside of standard business hours, including on call support, based on business needs.

Select responsibilities include:

• Design and evolve canonical semantic models (taxonomies, ontologies, knowledge graphs) for enterprise domains such as product, customer, and supply chain
• Design systems that provide high-quality context for LLMs, Retrieval pipelines (RAG / GraphRAG), Semantic search (embeddings, hybrid search), evidence-based reasoning layers
• Partner with AI/ML Science teams to ensure model correctness to reduce errors, hallucination risk and improve trust
• Address challenges of data ambiguity, duplication, and inconsistencies at scale through systemic data validation, schema governance and versioning practices
• Design and implement enterprise software solutions and technical frameworks spanning multiple teams, establishing coding patterns and practices that scale across the organization
• Drive complex, multi-team initiatives with minimal supervision, making key technical decisions independently while navigating ambiguity and competing priorities
• Write exemplary code in critical areas demonstrating best-in-class engineering practices when situations require deep technical expertise
• Consult with principal engineers and enterprise architects on architectural decisions providing technical expertise on implementation feasibility, scalability considerations, and operational implications
• Recommend technology options and tools to architects based on technical evaluation, team capabilities, and implementation requirements
• Establish engineering and coding standards adopted across the organization including testing strategies, development workflows, and quality practices
• Lead technical design reviews across the organization providing expert guidance on implementation approaches, scalability, and maintainability

Qualifications:

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or related technical field, or equivalent experience; Masters degree preferred
• 12 -16 years of software development experience defining technical strategy and establishing engineering standards across the organization, or equivalent
• Track record of writing exemplary code in critical areas requiring deep technical expertise; experience establishing coding and quality standards adopted at an organizational level
• Proven ability to decompose highly ambiguous technical challenges into effective, non-over-engineered solutions; experience anticipating technical impacts and trade-offs across multiple systems and teams at enterprise scale
• Experience designing enterprise integration solutions and establishing implementation patterns adopted across the organization
• Experience defining organizational operational strategies and reliability practices; familiarity with championing SLO/SLI frameworks, cost optimization, and platform reliability at scale
• Demonstrated ability to establish and articulate technical strategy across the organization in alignment with business objectives and strategic initiatives
• Experience building knowledge bases in retail or similar domains
• Familiarity with search, recommender and RAG/GraphRAG hybrid retrieval architectures
• Experience defining enterprise semantic layers used across multiple product teams
• Exposure to AI-driven systems - optimization, predictions and Agents
• Experience working with knowledge representation for LLM-powered applications

Must haves:

• Acknowledge the presence of choice in every moment and take personal responsibility for your life.
• Possess an entrepreneurial spirit and continuously innovate to achieve great results.
• Communicate with honesty and kindness and create the space for others to do the same.
• Lead with courage, knowing the possibility of greatness is bigger than the fear of failure.
• Foster connection by putting people first and building trusting relationships.
• Integrate fun and joy as a way of being and working, aka doesnt take yourself too seriously.