Principal Engineer

About the role

Backcountry needs a foundational technical leader who can own architecture, quality, and engineering standards across the e-commerce platform powering five outdoor and powersports brands. As Principal Engineer, Application Development, you will lead a team of developers building the fulfillment and order management systems our customers rely on, while driving AI-powered innovation that raises engineering throughput and reliability.

Responsibilities

• Spearhead AI technical innovation by designing AI and agentic workflows that empower engineering teams; leverage best-in-class AI toolsets to improve engineering delivery throughput, quality, and reliability.
• Design, develop, and maintain fulfillment systems (warehouse management, order management, etc.) that power the e-commerce platform, ensuring scalability, performance, and long-term maintainability.
• Lead a small team of developers in the design, development, and testing of software solutions, providing clear technical direction and accountability.
• Enable other engineering stakeholders and their teams to integrate quickly with fulfillment system interfaces by surfacing clean API documentation, observability monitoring, and alerting that give consumers of your systems a high level of dependability.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams across product, design, and operations to ensure successful and timely delivery of projects.
• Design and implement agentic quality gates that enable rapid iteration with a safety net developers can trust.
• Act as a technical mentor for engineers at all levels, providing hands-on guidance on software development best practices.
• Represent Backcountry's core values through your technical decisions and team interactions.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience in software development with a strong background in e-commerce fulfillment, including order management and warehouse management.
• Experience leveraging best-in-class AI tooling to accelerate development.
• Deep expertise in Java, Spring Framework, Spring Boot, and Node.js.
• Strong understanding of software architecture and design patterns with demonstrated experience applying them at enterprise scale.
• Expertise with relational databases and SQL, including query optimization.
• Expertise with NoSQL and document-oriented databases.
• Expertise with Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, and CI/CD tooling.
• Experience with cloud platforms, specifically GCP or AWS.
• Proven track record of leading software development teams and delivering high-quality, production-grade software.
• Excellent communication skills in English; ability to operate effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to think creatively under constraint.

Qualifications

• Experience in outdoor retail, multi-brand e-commerce, or similar high-SKU retail environments.
• Familiarity with omni-channel fulfillment and order management systems at scale.
• Familiarity with ERP enterprise systems such as NetSuite.