The posting
AutoStore™ holds a simple yet powerful vision: to store and move things for everyone, everywhere. Founded in Norway, we've grown into a global technology company. AutoStore uses advanced software to automate and orchestrate order fulfillment. Our goal is to ensure orders arrive faster than ever, with minimal environmental impact. That’s how we help brands exceed customer expectations.
We have more than 1600 systems in nearly 60 countries, and we grow continuously as a community of employees, partners, customers, suppliers, and connected technologies. Automation should make life easier, and by listening carefully to our community, we innovate to meet the industry’s most complex needs. With AutoStore™, brands gain speed, efficiency, and improved workplaces. And much more floor space.
AutoStore – moving things forward.
The Role
As a Lead Software Sustaining Engineer, you own the escalated (Tier 2) defect queue end to end: reproducing customer-reported issues, working through logs, telemetry, and crash dumps to true root cause, and delivering a tested fix, workaround, or a diagnosis complete enough for Tier 3 to act on immediately. You also run the function — triaging and assigning cases across junior engineers and contractors, reviewing their fixes for correctness and regression risk, leading high-severity incidents on a rotating on-call schedule, and writing the root-cause and knowledge-base record that keeps the same issue from escalating twice.
The other half of the role is self-directed. You are expected to know the product well enough to find where it is fragile, slow, or confusing before a customer does, build the case for fixing it, and either implement it yourself or drive it into the backlog through to release. You own the long-term health, performance, and supportability of the application, and you are measured on whether it is measurably better a year from now.
Key Tasks and Responsibilities:
- Serve as technical lead for the Sustaining function, owning intake, triage, prioritization, and resolution of escalated (Tier 2) customer issues.
- Direct the day-to-day work of junior engineers and contract resources, including task assignment, prioritization, and quality review (this role does not carry formal HR reporting responsibility or budgetary ownership).
- Deliver clean, well-tested defect fixes, patches, and maintenance releases following best practices and coding standards.
- Review fixes authored by junior engineers and contractors, gating patch quality and assessing regression risk before release to customers.
- Independently investigate customer-reported defects — analyzing logs, telemetry, crash dumps, and field data to isolate root cause and implement a durable fix.
- Drive rapid resolution of incoming customer issues against defined response and resolution service-level targets, escalating to Tier 3 or engineering owners when required.
- Participate in and coordinate the on-call rotation, leading response for high-severity production incidents and completing post-incident reviews.
- Develop and maintain technical documentation, root-cause write-ups, known-error records, and knowledge-base articles that enable Tier 1 to resolve issues without escalation.
- Mentor, direct, and review the work of junior engineers and contract resources, assigning cases and building their diagnostic capability.
- Partner with Customer Support, Quality, and Product Engineering to reproduce issues, feed recurring defects into the product backlog, and prevent repeat escalations.
- Analyze case and defect trends to identify systemic problems, and propose engineering or process changes that reduce escalation volume over time.
- Proactively identify and pursue improvements to the application without being asked — self-directed investigation of the codebase, telemetry, and support history to surface reliability, performance, usability, and supportability weaknesses before they generate customer escalations.
- Build the business case for those improvements — scoping, sizing, and prioritizing optimization and hardening work, then implementing it directly or driving it into the product backlog through to release.
Key Qualifications:
- 5–8 years of relevant experience in software development, including demonstrated experience in a sustaining, production support, or Tier 2 escalation role.
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field. A master's degree is preferred, but not required.
- Proficiency in .NET, with the ability to read and debug unfamiliar code in a live production codebase.
- Strong understanding of software development methodologies and hands-on proficiency with debugging, log analysis, and observability/monitoring tooling.
- Strong independent problem solver — able to work from incomplete data, form and test hypotheses, determine true root cause, and drive the fix to closure with minimal direction.
- Strong communication skills, including the ability to explain technical status and root cause clearly to customers and stakeholders during active incidents.
- Proven ability to lead, mentor, and direct the work of junior engineers and contract resources.
- Willingness and availability to participate in a rotating on-call schedule.
- Demonstrated ownership and composure under pressure — able to manage several concurrent escalations, judge severity correctly, and keep customers informed while the investigation is still open.
- Highly self-motivated and proactive — sets own improvement agenda, digs into the product unprompted, and consistently brings forward optimizations rather than waiting for direction.
- Experience with version control systems (e.g., Git) preferred.
- Experience with ticketing/case management and incident tooling (e.g., Jira Service Management, ServiceNow, Salesforce, PagerDuty) preferred.
- Familiarity with ITIL or similar incident, problem, and change management practices preferred.
- Relevant certifications in software development or related fields preferred.
We Offer:
AutoStore believes in taking care of employees and is dedicated to providing a supportive and rewarding work environment. Join us in our mission to store and move things for everyone, everywhere.
- Comprehensive Medical, Dental, and Vision plans
- Health Savings Account (HSA) with a company contribution
- Generous Paid Time Off including 12 holidays, paid exercise time, paid volunteer time, and paid parental leave plans for all new parents
- Retirement 401(k) plan with employer match and discretionary profit sharing contribution
- Educational assistance and professional development programs, including mentorship/coaching programs with external industry leaders
- Additional benefits include Group Life Insurance, Voluntary Additional Life Insurance, Disability Insurance, Employee Assistance programs, and more!
AutoStore is an Equal Opportunity Employer that does not discriminate on the basis of actual or perceived race, color, creed, religion, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, age, sex or gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, pregnancy-related conditions, and lactation), gender identity or expression (including transgender status), sexual orientation, marital status, military service and veteran status, physical or mental disability, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local laws and ordinances.
