Sr. Engineering Manager, Lowe's Innovation Labs

Innovate in Kirkland

This position is based at our Innovation Labs headquarters in Kirkland, Washington. Our facility features cutting-edge technology, private research and development spaces housing groundbreaking products, and open floor plans designed to foster collaboration and creativity—all to enhance your work experience.

Your Impact

Lowe’s Innovation Labs is a specialized innovation unit that keeps Lowe’s ahead of what’s next. We explore disruptive technologies, conduct hands-on applied R&D, and help the enterprise adopt promising new capabilities with less uncertainty and friction.

The Sr Manager, Software Engineering – Innovation leads R&D engineering teams that focus on exploring and incubating promising experiences and capabilities for spatial computing platforms, next-gen wearables, and more, all with the goal of creating meaningful capabilities for Lowe’s customers, associates, and enterprise.

This leader serves as a player/coach, combining hands-on experience with frontier technologies with deep engineering management discipline. Deep experience with emerging platforms and AI-augmented workflows—and the ability to guide multi-disciplinary engineers with diverse backgrounds—is a must. This role balances the speed and flexibility required for innovation with experience in navigating large enterprises and forging deep, cross-functional partnerships that lead to successful product/platform transitions.

Where You’ll Be

Associates are required to relocate to the Lowe's Kirkland WA to foster collaboration and support. The ideal candidate must be willing to work in the office at our Lowe's Innovation Labs Kirkland, office location, 5 days per week. Most business meetings are planned around the Pacific Time Zone.

Work with a Winning Team:

As part of a Fortune 500 company and retail leader, your work can change an entire industry. Our CEO is a forward-thinker when it comes to tech, and with one of Forbes Top 50 CIOs leading the charge, you can come to work knowing you’ll have access to the data, tools, and support that few other companies can offer. We also know what it takes to create an inclusive culture that supports you. Our teams are structured around the engineer, giving you the support you need to do your best work. Since we’ve been in business for over 100 years, we’ve built an excellent track record of growth and success. There’s peace of mind knowing you have the stability and resources you need to focus on solving tough challenges. And as you solve these challenges, know you’ll be surrounded by supportive associates with curious minds who listen to you, respect you, and recognize your hard work.

What You Will Do

• Leads and develops high-performing engineering teams, setting clear expectations, providing coaching and feedback, managing performance, and fostering an inclusive culture where associates are encouraged to experiment, learn, and achieve their potential.
• Inspires teams to push the boundaries of emerging technology while grounding exploration in clear hypotheses, learning objectives, customer needs, and potential business value.
• Maintains strong working fluency in frontier technologies relevant to their focus area and broad awareness of adjacent areas such as advanced AI, agentic systems, robotics, spatial computing, digital twins, simulation, interactive 3D, and emerging hardware.
• Evaluates emerging technologies, platforms, architectures, and development approaches and provides technical direction on their opportunities, limitations, risks, maturity, and applicability to Lowe’s.
• Establishes AI-augmented ways of working across engineering, research, analysis, experimentation, testing, and communication, identifying durable opportunities where AI and automation can improve team throughput and quality.
• Steers initiatives through a disciplined, applied R&D lifecycle from signal and exploration through prototype, proof of concept, pilot, and candidate for scale, establishing clear hypotheses, success metrics, learning objectives, and decision points to scale, pivot, continue, or stop.
• Balances the portfolio across speculative exploration, focused incubation, and near-scale initiatives, making clear resource allocation and prioritization decisions as new technical, customer, and business signals emerge.
• Establishes engineering standards, OKRs, and operating practices that balance experimentation speed with accountable delivery and ensures the appropriate level of quality, security, reliability, architecture, and operational readiness as solutions mature.
• Identifies reusable technical capabilities, architectural patterns, tooling, and platforms that can accelerate multiple innovation initiatives and leads efforts to resolve systemic engineering or organizational barriers.
• Maintains a deep understanding of Lowe’s customers, Pros, associates, operations, and business partners and ensures teams use field observations, customer and associate research, data, and experimentation to inform technology strategies and roadmaps.
• Influences technical and business decisions using experimentation results, customer insights, data, and strong engineering judgment, representing Innovation Labs’ perspective and recommendations credibly with senior leaders.
• Creates compelling narratives, executive presentations, demonstrations, and technical artifacts that clearly communicate the vision, opportunity, learnings, business value, roadmap, and risks of emerging technology initiatives, while coaching engineers to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical audiences.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer information systems (CIS), or related field or equivalent years of experience in lieu of education requirement, if applicable
• 8 years of IT experience
• 8 years of experience in software engineering or related field
• 8 years of experience working on project(s) involving the implementation of software development life cycles (SDLC)
• 3 years of experience leading project or technical teams with or without formal direct report responsibility; this includes experience providing technical direction, thought leadership, and coaching and mentoring team members

Preferred Skills/Education

• Master’s degree in computer science, CIS, or related field
• 5 years of experience in software development in an agile environment and working with third-party vendors/software solution providers
• 5 years of experience working in an IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) framework
• 3 years of experience in IT management in the retail industry
• 3 years of experience in an IT role requiring interaction with senior leadership

Benefits

401k with up to 4.25% match

Discounted Employee Stock Purchase Plan (15% discount of strike price)

Tuition-Free Education

10-week Maternity/Parental Leave

10% Associate Discount

For information about our benefit programs and eligibility, please visit https://talent.lowes.com/us/en/benefits 

Pay Range: $147,400.00 - $280,100.00 annually

Starting rate of pay may vary based on factors including, but not limited to, position offered, location, education, training, and/or experience. For information regarding our benefit programs and eligibility, please visit https://talent.lowes.com/us/en/benefits.

Associate Benefits (https://talent.lowes.com/us/en/joining-our-team)

• Working at one of the largest retail companies has its perks. We offer exceptional benefits and wellness programs for eligible full-time and part-time associates, tailored for many different lifestyles. Our benefits range from health, vision and dental insurance to paid vacation, tuition assistance and parental and family-building benefits. Plus, we offer learning and development opportunities to help our associates grow their skills and achieve their goals.
• Health, Dental and Vision insurance
• Life and Disability insurance
• Paid time off based on role, tenure, and locality, including vacation, holidays, sick and volunteer time
• Flexible spending and health savings accounts
• 401(k) Retirement account with company match
• Employee Assistance Program with concierge, work/life services and no-cost counseling for all kinds of needs
• Education support programs, including tuition assistance and trade skills scholarships
• Business Travel Accident insurance
• Maternity and Parental leave
• Adoption assistance
• Lowe's Associate Discount and broad discount platform
• Other discretionary benefits (based on eligibility) include annual bonuses, enrollment in Lowe's Employee Stock Purchase Plan and/or deferred compensation plan, and grant awards

About Lowe’s

Lowe’s Companies, Inc. (NYSE: LOW) is a FORTUNE® 100 home improvement company with total fiscal year 2025 sales of more than $86 billion. Lowe’s employs approximately 300,000 associates and operates over 1,750 home improvement stores, 540 branches and 120 distribution centers. Lowe’s is a core value S&P 500 equity stock and a dividend aristocrat. Based in Mooresville, N.C., Lowe’s supports the communities it serves through programs focused on creating safe, affordable housing, improving community spaces, helping to develop the next generation of skilled trade experts and providing disaster relief to communities in need. For more information, visit Lowes.com.  

Lowe’s is an equal opportunity employer and administers all personnel practices without regard to race, color, religious creed, sex, gender, age, ancestry, national origin, mental or physical disability or medical condition, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, military or veteran status, genetic information, or any other category protected under federal, state, or local law.