Principal Software Engineer – Back-end Development

A position at White Cap isn’t your ordinary job. You’ll work in an exciting and diverse environment, meet interesting people, and have a variety of career opportunities.

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Job Summary

Responsible for serving as the technical anchor for core connected commerce and operations platforms. Drives the architecture of next-generation distributed, high-performance backend systems and help define the technical direction for the Omnichannel IT engineering organization. Leads the delivery of complex, mission-critical software while shaping how systems are designed, built, tested, and operated at scale. Balances efforts across solving complex business challenges, leading strategic system design, contributing hands-on coding and prototyping, and mentoring engineers.

Major Tasks, Responsibilities and Key Accountabilities

• Partners with technical leaders to guide long-term technology roadmaps, evaluate emerging technologies, and resolve systemic issues.

• Prototypes critical services, reduces technical debt, and develops clean, maintainable, and well-tested code.

• Contributes to the design of high-level, distributed, and fault-tolerant backend systems to support large-scale production environments.

• Partners with product management, DevOps, and frontend teams to align technical solutions with company-wide goals.

• Develops IT strategies and improves existing processes to increase efficiency, streamline workflows, and enhance customer satisfaction.

• Coaches engineers, sets high standards for code reviews, and elevates the technical capabilities of the broader team.

• Interfaces with senior leadership and communicates complex technical concepts in clear, business-focused language.

• Performs other duties as assigned.

Nature and Scope

• Collaborates and consults with executives on complex and multi-dimensional business matters. Evaluates novel problems to determine solutions characterized by technical depth and breadth and the understanding of industry and business dynamics. Decisions and guidance at this level produce high risk and high impact actions that change the strategic course of the business.

• Influences business decisions made by leadership. Recommends operational strategies and plans with direct impact on results. Acts as a strategic advisor to top management.  Typically operates with broad latitude in a complex environment.

• Provides technical training to others as needed at all levels of the organization. Mentors staff and advises management on key technical strategies. This position does not have supervisory or management responsibilities.

Work Environment

• Located in a comfortable indoor area. Any unpleasant conditions would be infrequent and not objectionable.

• Most of the time is spent sitting in a comfortable position and there is frequent opportunity to move about. On rare occasions there may be a need to move or lift light articles.

• Typically requires overnight travel less than 5% of the time.

Education and Experience

• Typically requires a PhD degree and 15+ years of specialized experience in a related field OR MS/MA and generally 10+ years of experience in a related field. Maintains a deep level of technical expertise that drives business and executive decisions.

Preferred Qualifications

Job Summary

Serve as the technical anchor for our core connected commerce and operations platforms. In this role, you will contribute to the architecture of our next generation distributed, high-performance back-end systems and help set the technical direction for our engineering organization. This is a high-impact leadership position where you will split your time between solving complex business strategies, strategic system design, hands-on critical coding and prototyping, and mentoring other talented engineers.

Major Tasks, Responsibilities, and Key Accountabilities

• Contribute to the design of high-level, distributed, and fault-tolerant back-end systems that support large-scale production environments.
• Partner with other technical leaders to guide long-term technology roadmaps, evaluate emerging technologies, and solve systemic issues.
• Prototype critical services, refactor tech debt, and write clean, maintainable, and well-tested code.
• Coach engineers, set high standards for code reviews, and uplevel the technical capabilities of the broader team.
• Partner with product management, DevOps, and frontend teams to align technical solutions with company-wide goals.
• Create new IT strategies and improve existing IT procedures to increase efficiency, enhance workflows, and improve customer satisfaction.
• Ensure priorities are aligned with organizational goals and customer expectations. Interface with senior leadership and communicate complex technical issues in business language.

Nature and Scope

• Architecting scalable frontend infrastructure and managing unified design systems to ensure visual and technical consistency across all products.
• Defining modern UI tech stacks, setting engineering best practices, and driving performance optimization, including accessibility and Core Web Vitals.
• Mentoring senior engineering talent and bridging the gap between UX design, product management, and development teams to execute the long-term roadmap.

Work Environment

• Located in a comfortable indoor area. Any unpleasant conditions would be infrequent and not objectionable.
• Most of the time is spent sitting in a comfortable position and there is frequent opportunity to move about. On rare occasions there may be a need to move or lift light articles.
• Typically requires overnight travel less than 10% of the time.

Education and Experience

• Typically requires BS/BA in a related discipline. Generally, 8+ years of software engineering experience, with a heavy focus on deep back-end architecture, performant back-end systems and system integrations at scale. Certification is required in some areas.

Preferred Qualifications

• Mastery of JavaScript/TypeScript, semantic HTML, and modern CSS/CSS-in-JS strategies.
• Production experience with React and Next.js (SSR/ISR, routing/app router, middleware, caching/CDN strategies) and a Node.js/TypeScript BFF.
• Extensive experience with modern JS frameworks (such as React, Vue, or Web Components).
• Proven track record configuring build tools (e.g., Vite, Webpack), package management (npm, monorepos), and CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience building real-time/event-driven systems on Azure middleware (Event Grid, Service Bus/Event Hubs, Functions/Durable Functions, Logic Apps, API Management, Azure SignalR), including idempotency, retries/DLQs, backpressure, and observability.
• Expertise building secure, observable services (authN/Z, OAuth/SAML/SSO; OpenAPI; monitoring/alerting; distributed tracing).
• Built or migrated headless commerce experiences; strong command of API-first and composable architecture and middleware integrations.

If you’re looking to play a role in building America, consider one of our open opportunities. We can’t wait to meet you.