Context
Ben & Frank’s commerce platform made experiments and regional expansion increasingly difficult. New features required extensive coordination, and market launches duplicated behavior that teams needed to share.
Problem
- The existing architecture slowed product experiments.
- Eight frontend engineers needed clearer technical direction and ownership.
- Four markets required shared foundations with support for local rules.
- Engineers needed defined paths into technical leadership.
Approach
As Senior Engineering Manager, I led the architecture decisions and the team responsible for the migration. I helped select Next.js and CommerceTools. The migration plan allowed ongoing product delivery during the transition.
Decisions
- Use Next.js for the frontend because the team already worked with React.
- Use CommerceTools for commerce APIs and support for multiple markets.
- Connect services through APIs to reduce dependencies on platform-specific behavior.
- Develop engineering career paths alongside the migration. Engineers who understood the architecture became its Tech Leads.
Impact
The headless platform supports four markets and regional expansion without separate codebases for each market. Four engineers became Tech Leads during this period.
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