Senior Principal Software Engineer

About the role

Own and build Agentic AI platforms to power personalization, lifecycle engagement, and customer journeys across Shutterfly. This is a high-impact, hands-on technical leadership role responsible for shaping the architecture, design, and implementation of AI systems that directly drive conversion, customer satisfaction, and long-term growth.

Responsibilities

• Architect and build scalable agentic AI systems that power various seamless experiences for customers that drive conversion and customer delight.
• Develop multi-agent systems that reason, plan, and take actions across tools and services.
• Build Autonomous agents operating across end-to-end customer journeys.
• Enable multiple teams to innovate independently.
• Drive End-to-End Technical Strategy.
• Define platform abstractions and reusable capabilities that enable teams across the organization to build and deploy AI-powered experiences independently.
• Contribute to, define, and lead architecture for AI platforms integrated into Shutterfly.
• Build foundational capabilities including: Evaluation frameworks for AI quality, safety, and business impact; Scalable inference and orchestration infrastructure; Ensure systems are highly available, performant, and production-grade at scale.
• Maintain deep hands-on involvement in prototyping, architecture, and critical production systems, setting the standard for engineering excellence.
• Leverage modern AI tooling (LLMs, agents, vector databases, orchestration frameworks) to set the standard for AI-driven engineering productivity and development practices.
• Lead by example in coding, design reviews, and system debugging.
• Deliver measurable business impact through defined and tracked AI-specific success metrics, including model quality, latency, cost efficiency, and business KPIs.
• Partner with Product, UX, and Data teams to translate AI capabilities into: Increased conversion and revenue, Improved customer experience and engagement, Faster time-to-market for new capabilities.
• Drive experimentation (A/B testing) and ensure AI systems deliver quantifiable outcomes.
• Lead across the organization, influencing architecture and execution across multiple teams and domains: Ecommerce platform (shopping, cart, checkout), Creation flows and personalization systems, Marketing technology and lifecycle platforms.
• Mentor senior engineers and leaders; raise the bar on AI and system design excellence.
• Champion adoption of agentic AI and AI-first development practices across engineering.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in an Engineering discipline or Computer Science
• 12+ years of software engineering experience with deep expertise in distributed systems
• Proven track record of architecting and delivering large-scale, high-impact systems
• Experience influencing and leading cross-organizational technical strategy
• Strong hands-on coding and system design skills
• Experience operating large-scale, highly available cloud systems
• Demonstrated ability to translate advanced technology into business impact

Preferred Qualifications

• Master's degree in an Engineering discipline or Computer Science
• Experience building 0→1 AI platforms or products in ambiguous, fast-moving environments
• Experience building AI/ML systems, especially with: LLMs, agent frameworks, and retrieval systems
• Multi-agent architectures and orchestration experience
• Experience in consumer-facing products or ecommerce platforms