Position Purpose:
As a Senior Principal Engineer, you will serve as the chief technical architect and visionary leader for our Mobile App Renovation Strategy (MARS). You will define the future of our high-performance, modular, and intelligent mobile ecosystem. This role demands a world-class engineer who is deeply technical, possesses an extensive background in native mobile development and server-side orchestration, and can champion innovative AI-first software development. You will report directly to senior technology leadership and lead cross-functional feature and platform teams to build our next-generation architecture. We are seeking a visionary leader who will not only build the platform but will also aggressively drive AI-first software development. You will establish, steer, and inspire our AI Tiger Team and directly influence how engineering teams utilize artificial intelligence throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
Key Responsibilities:
• 50% Delivery and Execution - Leads portfolio level Principal meetings to maintain alignment, consistency and knowledge sharing; Creates and architects foundational code elements that can be reused across a portfolio; Develops POCs with new technologies and paves the way for portfolio adoption; Tracks and monitors efficient usage of cloud resources and drives cost reduction opportunities and enhancements
• 10% People - Acts as a point of escalation for teams facing extremely complex challenges; Presents at and attends conferences and learns how to apply new technologies and concepts; Provides leadership, mentoring, and coaching to direct reports; Conducts annual and mid-year reviews, reviewing individual development plans and providing performance feedback; Attracts, retains, develops, and motivates top talent
• 15% Strategy and Planning - Works with a Distinguished Engineer to define technology solutions (open source or vendor) teams should be exploring and/or leveraging; Works across local teams to unify strategy and alignment; Identifies and removes potential roadblocks & bottlenecks across large cross-functional projects and initiatives; Participates in and influences development of technology roadmaps within a given portfolio; Drives thought leadership and innovation within a given portfolio
• 25% Support and Enablement - Point of escalation for high-priority issues and outages as they arise; Fields questions from project, product, and support teams; Helps solve technology disputes across local teams; Works with vendors to help identify and implement feature enhancements in software products; Evangelizes successful usage of tooling and technology with local teams
Direct Manager/Direct Reports:
• This position reports to various individuals
• This position has 4-6 direct reports
Travel Requirements:
• Typically requires overnight travel 5% to 20% of the time.
Physical Requirements:
• 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.
Working Conditions:
• Located in a comfortable indoor area. Any unpleasant conditions would be infrequent and not objectionable.
Minimum Qualifications:
• Must be eighteen years of age or older.
• Must be legally permitted to work in the United States.
• Expertise in at least two technologies used by THD IT
• Experience with common business processes used in the retail industry
• Experience in Agile/Lean development environments
• 7 years of relevant work experience
• The knowledge, skills and abilities typically acquired through the completion of a bachelor's degree program or equivalent in a field of study related to the job
• Typically requires overnight travel less than 15% of the time
Preferred Qualifications:
• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 4+ years leading architecture in a Principal or Senior Principal capacity for a major consumer-facing mobile application.
• Transformation Track Record: Proven track record of executing a major technology renovation or modernization strategy (preferably containing SDUI, KMP, and GraphQL BFF elements).
• Distributed Systems Mastery: Expert knowledge of microservices, server-side GraphQL patterns, and high-performance, multi-layered JVM in-memory caching.
• AI Expertise: Practical, hands-on experience using GenAI APIs, LLM prompt engineering, and code-generation tools/agents to accelerate development.
• Leadership & Influence: Outstanding communication and presentation skills, with a proven history of writing technical white papers, presenting architecture to executive leadership, and driving technical alignment across large engineering organizations (50+ engineers).
Tech Stack
• Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP): Architecting shared business logic layers.
• Server-Driven UI (SDUI): Designing extensible layout engines to dynamicize screen rendering.
• Native Platforms: Proficient in Android (Kotlin, Jetpack Compose) and iOS (Swift, UIKit, SwiftUI).
• GraphQL & Federation: GraphQL (Netflix DGS) and GraphQL Federation layers.
• Backend Stacks: Spring Boot 3.5, Java 21, REST APIs, and microservices integrated with core services like SearchNav, ProductGateway, and TypeAhead
• Automated unit and integration testing using JUnit 5, XCTest, MockK, Espresso, and XCUITest.
• Visual regression testing with Paparazzi and Shot.
• Mobile-specific delivery pipelines including Bitrise, Fastlane, TestFlight, and Firebase App Distribution.
• Automated security practices including Static (SAST) and Dynamic (DAST) Application Security Testing.
• Performance instrumentation using New Relic, GCP Cloud Monitoring, Prometheus, and distributed tracing spanning hybrid mobile-to-backend journeys.
Authoring & Personalization
• Contentful (CMS), Adobe Target, and centralized remote configuration.
• Minimum Education:
• The knowledge, skills and abilities typically acquired through the completion of a bachelor's degree program or equivalent degree in a field of study related to the job.
Preferred Education:
• No additional education
Minimum Years of Work Experience:
• 7
Preferred Years of Work Experience:
• No additional years of experience
Minimum Leadership Experience:
• None
Preferred Leadership Experience:
• None
Certifications:
• None
Competencies:
• Courage
• Drives Vision and Purpose
• Global Perspective
• Nimble Learning
• Self-Development
• Attracts Top Talent
• Builds Effective Teams
• Collaborates
• Cultivates Innovation
• Drives Engagement
• Manages Complexity
• Situational Adaptability
• Communicates Effectively
• Develops Talent
• Drives Results
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