Distinguished Engineer - Orange Apron Media

Position Purpose:

Distinguished Engineers are recognized as experts in one or more domains within Home Depot and across the industry. They represent the senior technical experts within the organization and have a strong track record of growing and influencing others. Distinguished Engineers will connect teams to one another in a spirit of collaboration and will champion opportunities to make teams more efficient.

As a Distinguished Engineer, you will be responsible helping to shape the go-forward direction of the organization; working with senior leaders, vendors, and partners to influence technology roadmaps and the adoption of new technologies across the enterprise. In addition, you will teach, mentor, and grow other domain experts within the organization.

Key Responsibilities:

30% Strategy & Planning:

• Works with senior leaders to shape the go-forward vision for the organization from a specific domain perspective
• Works with vendors and partners on the successful strategy, planning, and implementation of critical tooling and platforms
• Participates in and influences development of technology roadmaps across the enterprise
• Evaluates new technologies for adoption across the enterprise
• Drives thought leadership and innovation within the organization

30% Support & Enablement:

• Fields questions from product, project and support teams
• Evangelizes successful usage of tooling and technologies with teams
• Monitors tools and leads conversations to encourage collaboration across product teams
• Learns, through reading, tutorials, relationships, and videos, new technologies and best practices being used in other organizations

25% Delivery & Execution:

• Teaches, mentors, grows, and advises other domain experts in the organization (including direct reports, if applicable)
• Documents, reviews and ensures that all quality and change control standards are met
• Works with vendors and partners on the successful planning and implementation of critical tooling and platforms
• Understands and articulates the value creation and business proposition to teams and functional partners
• Participates in and leads review board sessions to drive consistency across the enterprise

15% People:

• Acts as a point of escalation for teams facing extremely complex challenges
• Participates in and leads learning activities within the organization
• Connects teams facing similar challenges and problems to encourage consistency
• Presents at and attends conferences and learns how to apply new technologies and concepts
• Capable of jumping into a variety of teams to resolve issues
• Provides leadership, mentoring, and coaching to direct reports (if applicable)
• Conducts annual and mid-year reviews, reviewing individual development plans and providing performance feedback (if applicable)
• Attracts, retains, develops, and motivates top talent (applicable if incumbent has direct reports)

Direct Manager/Direct Reports:

• This role typically reports to Sr. Director or Vice President and may have a small number of non-manager direct reports with VP approval.

Travel Requirements:

• Typically requires overnight travel 5% to 20% of the time.

Physical Requirements:

• Most of the time is spent sitting in a comfortable position and there is frequent opportunity to move about. On rare occasions there may be a need to move or lift light articles.

Working Conditions:

• Located in a comfortable indoor area. Any unpleasant conditions would be infrequent and not objectionable.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Must be eighteen years of age or older.
• Must be legally permitted to work in the United States.
• Must be legally permitted to work in the United States

Preferred Qualifications:

• Executive Technical Leadership: 12+ years of progressive engineering experience, with a proven track record as a Distinguished Engineer, Principal Architect, or Director-level technical leader overseeing large-scale, complex enterprise architectures.
• Domain Expertise (MarTech, Retail Media, & Loyalty): Deep technical domain expertise in building and scaling high-throughput Marketing Technology stacks, Retail Media Networks (RMNs), and omnichannel loyalty platforms within a multi-billion $ retail or e-commerce ecosystem.
• AI Strategy & Enablement: Demonstrated experience leading an organization through the adoption, scaling, and governance of AI/ML technologies (including GenAI, predictive personalization, and automated content generation) to drive customer engagement and ad-yield optimization.
• Advanced People Leadership: Proven success as a people leader managing senior technical talent, with the unique ability to inspire, mentor, and elevate a team of high-performing Senior Principal Engineers
• Enterprise Architecture & Governance: Expert-level mastery of enterprise architecture frameworks, governance, and industry best practices, ensuring decentralized engineering teams build scalable, resilient, and compliant solutions that align with broader corporate standards.
• Data Infrastructure & Privacy Integration: Advanced knowledge of Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), data clean rooms, identity resolution, and real-time data streaming pipelines, combined with a strict adherence to modern data privacy regulations and security guardrails.
• Cloud-Native & Distributed Systems: Extensive hands-on experience designing and operating cloud-native architectures (GCP, Azure, AWS) and microservices capable of supporting millions of daily active users and processing massive datasets.
• Executive Influence & Strategic Alignment: Exceptional communication skills with a track record of bridging the gap between deeply technical engineering teams and executive business stakeholders (such as Product, Marketing, and Retail Operations) to turn business vision into technical reality.

Minimum Education:

• The knowledge, skills and abilities typically acquired through the completion of a bachelor's degree program or equivalent degree in a field of study related to the job.

Preferred Education:

• No additional education

Minimum Years of Work Experience:

• 8

Preferred Years of Work Experience:

• No additional years of experience

Minimum Leadership Experience:

• None

Preferred Leadership Experience:

• None

Certifications:

• None

Competencies:

• Action Oriented: Taking on new opportunities and tough challenges with a sense of urgency, high energy, and enthusiasm
• Attracts Top Talent: Attracting and selecting the best talent to meet current and future business needs (applicable if incumbent has direct reports)
• Builds Effective Teams: Building strong-identity teams that apply their diverse skills and perspectives to achieve common goals (applicable if incumbent has direct reports)
• Builds Networks: Effectively building formal and informal relationship networks inside and outside the organization
• Collaborates: Building partnerships and working collaboratively with others to meet shared objectives
• Courage: Stepping up to address difficult issues, saying what needs to be said
• Cultivates Innovation: Creating new and better ways for the organization to be successful
• Decision Quality: Making good and timely decisions that keep the organization moving forward
• Develops Talent: Developing people to meet both their career goals and the organization's goals (applicable if incumbent has direct reports)
• Drives Engagement: Creating a climate where people are motivated to do their best to help the organization achieve its objectives (applicable if incumbent has direct reports)
• Drives Results: Consistently achieving results, even under tough circumstances
• Drives Vision and Purpose: Painting a compelling picture of the vision and strategy that motivates others to action
• Global Perspective: Taking a broad view when approaching issues; using a global lens
• Manages Complexity: Making sense of complex, high quantity, and sometimes contradictory information to effectively solve problems
• Nimble Learning: Actively learning through experimentation when tackling new problems, using both successes and failures as learning fodder
• Self-Development: Actively seeking new ways to grow and be challenged using both formal and informal development channels
• Situational Adaptability: Adapting approach and demeanor in real time to match the shifting demands of different situations
• Strategic Mindset: Seeing ahead to future possibilities and translating them into breakthrough strategies
• Tech Savvy: Anticipating and adopting innovations in business-building digital and technology applications