Senior Principal Software Engineer - Generative AI & Mobile Platforms

Role Description

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.

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.
• Proven track record of executing a major technology renovation or modernization strategy (preferably containing SDUI, KMP, and GraphQL BFF elements).
• Expert knowledge of microservices, server-side GraphQL patterns, and high-performance, multi-layered JVM in-memory caching.
• Practical, hands-on experience using GenAI APIs, LLM prompt engineering, and code-generation tools/agents to accelerate development.
• 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.
• 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

Salary Information

The pay range for this position is between $170,000.00 - $280,000.00 for California, Colorado, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Nevada, New York City, Ithaca (NY), Westchester County (NY), and Washington residents.