Engineering Manager · Foot Locker
Obie Munoz
I manage the Digital Performance & Platform team at Foot Locker. We own web performance, platform stability, and developer tooling for Foot Locker, Kids Foot Locker, and Champs Sports.
About
Before software, I spent eight years in law enforcement, finishing as a detective at the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office with up to 26 open investigations at a time across fraud and financial crimes. Police work taught me to follow the evidence, write everything down, and stay calm when things go sideways. Those habits are how I run an engineering team now.
Where I focus
- 01
Performance
I built the Core Web Vitals improvements tied to $14M+ in North American revenue in FY24, and now lead the team that owns that work.
- 02
Platform & security
Cleared more than 130 open security vulnerabilities, from XSS issues to outdated dependencies. Built a dev environment with hot module reloading that took frontend feedback loops from minutes to seconds.
- 03
People
Weekly 1:1s with my engineers, plus best-practices and code review sessions for a frontend org of 20 plus.
How I lead
Follow the evidence
When something breaks, we dig until we understand what actually happened, then write it up for the whole team. The point is to understand the failure, not to find someone to blame.
Stay close to the code
I still write production code and review pull requests. That keeps my conversations with engineers honest and my estimates realistic.
Write it down
Decisions, roadmaps, and postmortems all get written down. If a decision only exists in a meeting, it gets relitigated in three months. Written records let the team move without me in the room.
Tie the work to the business
I plan the roadmap with Product and weigh feature delivery against paying down technical debt. Engineering effort should connect to something the business actually needs.
Career
- 2013 to 2021
Law Enforcement Officer · Pinellas County, Florida
Burglary, fraud, wire scams, and financial exploitation cases. Supervised and coached new unit members.
- 2022 to 2023
E-Commerce Full Stack Developer · Ashley Furniture
Career change through Flatiron School. Migrated the storefront to Svelte and wrote the style guide that became the standard across teams.
- 2023 to 2024
Senior Software Engineer · Foot Locker, Commerce Services
Order management microservices in Java and Spring Boot that later held up through Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
- 2024 to 2025
Acting Lead, then Lead Software Engineer · Foot Locker, Digital Performance
Cleared 130+ open security vulnerabilities. Built the performance work tied to $14M+ in FY24 revenue.
- 2025 to 2026
Lead Software Engineer · Foot Locker, Digital Platform
Tech lead and people manager for the platform team before the formal promotion.
- 2026 to present
Engineering Manager · Foot Locker, Digital Performance & Platform
Now managing people across the frontend platform team, accessibility, and QA automation. Recent work includes digging out legacy defects that had quietly been costing the business millions a year.
Get in touch
Tampa, FL · Remote, US