Lead Developer

OVERVIEW

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.

THE IMPACT YOU CAN HAVE:

The Lead Developer is responsible for supporting, planning, and coordinating functional and technical activities related to Enterprise Integration Services like Kafka & related DevSecOps practices in a highly dynamic and fast paced environment. They work alongside talented Technical Leads, Architects, Software Engineers, and Quality Engineers in our highly collaborative environment to deliver high quality solutions on time and on budget. This position plays a key role in establishing, executing, and supporting business critical systems and process to enhance Ulta guest experience.

YOU'LL ACCOMPLISH THESE GOALS BY:

• Agile Framework - Perform software development within an Agile Framework, ensuring rapid delivery, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Application Support - Assists in the investigation and resolution of issues relating to applications. Assists with specified procedures.
• Development Testing - Performs the execution of given test scripts under supervision. Records results and reports issues. Develops an understanding of the role of testing within system development, as a tool for design improvement as well as a validation process.
• Problem Management - Investigates problems in systems, processes and services. Assists with the implementation of agreed remedies and preventative measures.
• Programming/Software Development - Contributes to the designs, development, testing, and documentation of complex programs from agreed specifications, and subsequent iterations, using agreed standards and tools. Assesses own work and leads reviews of colleagues' work. Mentors less experienced colleagues as required.
• Release Deployment - Uses the tools and techniques for specific areas of release and deployment activities. Administers the recording of activities, logging of results and documents technical activity undertaken.
• Requirements Definition & Management - Uses established techniques as directed to identify current problems and elicit, specify and document business functional, data and non-functional requirements.
• Systems Integration - Assists in the software builds from software source code. Performs tests as defined in an integration test specification, records the details of any failures, and carries out fault diagnosis relating to simple failures, reporting the results of the diagnosis in a clear and concise manner.

ESSENTIALS FOR SUCCESS:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Information Technology, or a related field, or equivalent work experience.
• Minimum of 5 years of experience in designing, implementing, and maintaining scalable, high-performance event-driven architectures using Apache Kafka/Confluent Kafka.
• 5+ years of strong development experience with implementing DevSecOps practices using IaC, Jenkins, Harness, BitBucket, SonarQube, Prisma Scanning, Dynatrace, Sumo Logic and similar tools and technologies.
• Extensive experience with Confluent Kafka, including its enterprise-grade features.
• In-depth understanding of Kafka architecture, including Brokers, Topics, Partitions, Replication, Producers, and Consumers.
• Hands-on experience with Kafka Connect for integrating external data sources.
• Strong proficiency in Kafka Streams and KSQL for real-time data processing.
• Hands-on experience with Flink for real-time stream processing and data pipeline development.
• Expertise in schema management using Confluent Schema Registry.
• Proven ability to configure and optimize Kafka for high availability, fault tolerance, DR and performance.
• Experience deploying and managing Kafka clusters across cloud environments (GCP,AWS, Azure) and on-premises.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes and Docker for containerized Kafka deployments.
• Proficiency with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Terraform, Ansible, and Helm for Kafka deployment automation.
• Implement and enforce DevSecOps principles, integrating security into CI/CD pipelines from development through production.
• Proven experience implementing DevSecOps practices across CI/CD pipelines using tools such as Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, BitBucket or Harness.
• Strong understanding of Kafka security mechanisms, including SSL/TLS, SASL OAuth, and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC).
• Experience implementing data governance and compliance best practices in Kafka ecosystems.
• Knowledge of event-driven architecture and pub-sub messaging patterns.
• Experience integrating Kafka with enterprise data warehouses, data lakes, and NoSQL databases (MongoDB, Elasticsearch, etc.).
• Collaborate with Security, Architecture, and Development teams to align with enterprise standards and policies.
• Troubleshoot issues and lead root cause analysis for production incidents.

Additional Requirements:

• Experience in working within Scrum or Kanban methodologies, including participation in sprints, backlog grooming, daily stand-ups, sprint planning, and retrospectives.
• Ability to break down features into well-defined user stories with acceptance criteria.
• Experience working with production support and project teams in an onshore/offshore model.
• Ability to work independently with minimal guidance and a strong sense of accountability.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to influence cross-functional teams to develop robust solutions.
• Excellent communication skills, quick learner, and detail-oriented.
• High level of professionalism and commitment to delivering quality solutions.
• Familiarity with complete Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) for data integration projects.
• Facilitate design and requirement discussions with different IT and Business stake holders.
• Manage and track the integration repository and ensure the completeness of transition to production support team providing detailed documentation.
• Assist with establishing and enforcing integration best practices across on-site and offshore team members

The pay range for this position is $102,900.00 - $150,000.00 / 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. For additional information concerning our benefits, visit our Benefits and Career Development page:

ABOUT

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.