Principal Software Engineer, Tech Lead, Retail

Role overview

Principal Software Engineer / Tech Lead for a fast-growing Retail vertical, responsible for building foundational technology that supports both large enterprise customers and smaller chains. The position partners directly with operators through store visits and ongoing conversations to deeply understand workflows, then translates those insights into scalable, resilient systems. It suits a hands-on technical leader who can set long-term architecture direction while remaining closely tied to customer reality.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, deploy, and maintain highly resilient and scalable systems that are critical to large retail customer operations
• Define and drive long-term technical architecture and strategy, aligning platform capabilities with executive business goals
• Anticipate future needs in design decisions and articulate tradeoffs across the stack
• Communicate technical direction clearly across the organization
• Sponsor and mentor senior engineering talent, growing the next generation of technical leaders
• Diagnose performance bottlenecks and ship optimizations, leveraging AI tools to accelerate velocity and pioneer new development approaches

Requirements

• 9+ years of experience building and shipping production software to customers
• Proficiency in Java, Kotlin, or another object-oriented programming language
• Ability to articulate sophisticated project roadmaps and empower engineering teams to execute them
• Comfort working through ambiguity with a startup mindset and drive to create order from it
• Demonstrated ability to act as a trusted technical authority making both immediate and long-term decisions
• Humility, empathy, deep respect for peers, and a growth-oriented approach to craft

Nice to have

• Experience supporting large-scale retail or grocery customers with complex integration and back-office needs
• Background mentoring Staff and Senior Staff engineers

Benefits and work setup

• US remote, Boston hybrid, or New York hybrid options
• Hybrid work model balancing in-person collaboration with individual flexibility
• Total rewards package including base salary (geo-tiered), bonus/commission eligibility, equity, and benefits
• Company-provided AI tools across disciplines to support productivity and learning