Principal Software Engineer

Role Description

Backcountry is searching for a passionate Principal Software Engineer to join our engineering organization and drive the evolution of our outdoor retail ecommerce platform. This is a high impact leadership role for someone who thrives in complex systems, loves solving meaningful technical challenges, and wants to shape the future of our technology landscape. As a Principal Engineer, you will guide architecture, deliver high quality solutions, mentor engineering teams, and influence strategy across multiple product areas. You will help us scale, modernize, and innovate while ensuring our platform delivers a fast, seamless, and reliable experience for customers.

This role is challenging – above and beyond the day-to-day responsibilities, you’ll have a big role within a fast-paced team. This position will report into the Director of Engineering.

What you will do:

• Lead end to end software delivery including architecture design, hands-on development, testing, deployment, documentation, and production support for our ecommerce platform.
• Serve as a technical mentor and coach for engineers across levels supporting code reviews, technical decisions, and skill development.
• Partner with Product Design and Engineering leadership to deliver scalable user-focused features that elevate business value.
• Champion modern engineering practices including clean architecture, unit testing, automation, performance optimization, and observability.
• Drive key initiatives as a technical leader occasionally guiding a small team of engineers from concept to delivery.
• Influence architectural direction and propose improvements that enhance system performance, scalability, reliability, and maintainability.
• Produce high quality documentation including TRDs, diagrams, technical instructions, and onboarding materials.
• Own reliability monitoring, alerting, and incident response for mission-critical systems.
• Stay current with new technologies and contribute to innovation and continuous improvement across the engineering organization.
• Identify opportunities to simplify legacy components, reduce technical debt, and deliver long-term efficiency gains.

Qualifications

• Bachelor degree or Master degree in Computer Science or related field.
• 10 plus years of professional software development experience with strong ecommerce background.
• Expertise with Java Spring Framework, Spring Boot, and NodeJs.
• Strong front end experience with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and React.
• Deep expertise in software architecture, distributed systems, and design patterns.
• Proficiency in at least one core backend language such as Java, Python, or C Sharp.
• Proven history of leading engineering teams and delivering production grade software.
• Strong understanding of relational databases and SQL.
• Experience with NoSQL or document-oriented databases.
• Hands-on skill with Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience with AWS or GCP and cloud-first architecture.
• Excellent communication, leadership, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Strong problem-solving talent and the ability to think creatively and strategically.

Benefits

• Executive Access: Work directly with brand CEOs and senior leadership, solving real business problems and earning mentorship from top operators.
• AI-First Skill Building: Get hands-on with the most advanced AI tools in the market. From automation to prompt engineering, you’ll build a modern tech stack that sets you apart in any industry.
• Accelerated Career Path: High performers are quickly entrusted with greater responsibility, new challenges, and leadership opportunities across our portfolio of brands.
• Competitive benefits: Paid time off policies, 401(k)/RRSP match, medical/dental/vision and a variety of supplemental policies, and employee discounts at our portfolio companies.

Our interview process

• Step 1: If you align with our vision and meet the qualifications, we’ll reach out to schedule a conversation and introduce CSC.
• Step 2: You’ll complete a short AI or product-building challenge so we can understand how you approach problems and execution.
• Step 3: Participate in deep-dive interviews with CSC leadership focused on your experience, product mindset, and operational thinking.
• Step 4: Offer. We’ll move fast for the right candidate.