Senior Manager, Software Engineering - Global Forwarding Technology

C.H. Robinson is seeking a Senior Manager, Software Engineering, to join our Global Forwarding team as we continue to expand our strategic technology portfolio and engineering capabilities. In this leadership role, you will provide day-to-day direction for engineering teams, develop and mentor technical talent, and partner closely with product, business, and technology leaders to deliver innovative solutions that drive business impact.

You will be responsible for leading high-performing engineering teams that design, build, and support complex software solutions across our application platforms, while also integrating third-party technologies into our broader technology ecosystem. As a strategic and forward-thinking leader, you will help shape the engineering roadmap, drive modernization and automation initiatives, and champion the adoption of AI-driven solutions to improve efficiency, scalability, and customer outcomes.

The ideal candidate is a proven people leader and technical bar raiser who fosters a culture of innovation, engineering excellence, and continuous improvement. You bring a strong understanding of automation, AI technologies, and modern software engineering practices, coupled with the ability to align technical strategies with business objectives and deliver results in a fast-paced, global environment.

This role can be based only in MN, IL or Kansas City

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

The duties and responsibilities of this position consist of, but are not limited to, the following:

• Partner with product, business, operations, and technology leaders to define strategy across Global Forwarding capabilities and ensure engineering teams are aligned to the highest-value business outcomes
• Lead engineering teams responsible for modernizing and automating complex Global Forwarding workflows across areas such as pricing and rating, carrier contracts, shipment planning and execution, booking, visibility, documents, and operational workflows
• Collaborate with cross-functional leaders to move opportunities from discovery through delivery and into production, balancing speed, scalability, technical quality, and business value
• Identify opportunities to apply automation, AI, large language models, and agentic technologies to reduce manual work, improve decision-making, and create more scalable Global Forwarding operations
• Partner with senior engineers and architects to establish practical patterns for AI-enabled workflows, including human-in-the-loop design, evaluation, observability, security, governance, and appropriate guardrails
• Encourage teams to experiment with emerging technologies and AI-assisted development tools while maintaining strong engineering discipline, production readiness, and measurable business outcomes
• Help define product and technology vision in the context of established Global Forwarding business goals and evolving strategic opportunities
• Build and maintain technology roadmaps that connect engineering investments to measurable business outcomes
• Define and communicate technical and organizational strategy while ensuring product stability, scalability, reliability, and security
• Lead teams through ambiguity and evolving priorities, helping translate broad business opportunities into clear engineering objectives and incremental delivery plans
• Work across Technology teams and domains to recruit expertise, resolve dependencies, remove roadblocks, and prevent duplication of capabilities
• Drive reuse of common platforms, services, patterns, and automation capabilities across the Global Forwarding technology ecosystem
• Identify additional technical resource needs across teams and raise awareness early to support timely delivery and realization of value
• Balance investment between new strategic capabilities, modernization, technical debt reduction, production health, and ongoing business commitments
• Manage disputes and competing priorities between technical teams to maintain progress against shared goals
• Build and maintain technology product roadmaps with an emphasis on repeatable, scalable, secure solutions, continuous improvement, and speed of delivery
• Manage escalated technical and operational issues and ensure appropriate ownership and resolution
• Engage and assist other teams in high-priority incidents
• Follow enterprise goals around HPIs and critical/major outages
• Address production issues with a sense of urgency while driving systemic improvements that reduce recurrence

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Human-Computer Interaction, Business, or related field
• Experience with ERP, TMS, freight forwarding, supply chain management, transportation, or other complex operational systems
• Experience leading teams that build highly automated, high-volume transactional workflows
• Experience applying generative AI, large language models, intelligent automation, or agentic technologies to business workflows
• Experience leading teams experimenting with or deploying AI-powered applications, including tool/function calling, retrieval-augmented generation, workflow orchestration, intelligent agents, or AI-assisted decision support
• Understanding of enterprise AI considerations including evaluation, observability, security, privacy, governance, human oversight, and responsible deployment
• Experience using AI-assisted software development and agentic engineering tools to improve developer productivity and delivery speed
• Experience leading modernization of legacy platforms while maintaining critical business continuity
• Experience with architectural concepts such as Domain Driven Design, event-driven architecture, distributed systems, APIs, and SOLID principles
• Experience with cloud-native architecture and platforms such as Azure, AWS, or GCP
• Experience working in a product-led organization and applying lean principles to product development
• Strong strategic orientation, business acumen, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills with the ability to evaluate broad organizational and technical impacts
• Demonstrated ability to create an environment that encourages innovation while maintaining accountability for production quality and delivery
• Effective and flexible communication skills with the ability to articulate complex technical and business concepts in a clear and relatable way
• Strong interpersonal skills including the ability to build trust, influence, and foster relationships across diverse teams and functions
• Demonstrated experience consulting, influencing without authority, negotiating, resolving conflict, and escalating when necessary
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, decentralized, matrixed, global environment
• Excellent organizational, planning, and execution skills with the ability to manage multiple competing, high-priority initiatives
• Ability to lead, motivate, and inspire cross-functional and globally distributed teams
• Ability to connect the work teams are doing to strategic business priorities and measurable outcomes
• Experience leading through organizational and technology change
• Growth mindset with demonstrated experience giving and receiving feedback
• Ability to motivate and encourage change and drive positive outcomes in a large, dispersed organization
• Ability to travel up to 10% domestically and internationally