Principal Staff Engineer - Web Platform

Company and Vision

PlanetArt’s vision is to be the leading seller of personalized and make-on-demand products worldwide. We provide consumers with unmatched tools and content and an unparalleled end-to-end customer experience that result in high-quality, meaningful finished products and memorable celebrations of live events.


The company’s brands include the popular FreePrints and FreePrints Photobooks apps and the industry leading SimplytoImpress card and stationery site, as well as Personal Creations, CafePress and ISeeMe! Visit to learn more about our brands.

We have more than 500 team members across multiple offices, primarily in Calabasas CA, San Diego CA, Woodridge IL, Minneapolis, MN and Pleasanton, CA. We also have team members in two company-owned offices in China, as well as in Europe.


Job Overview

PlanetArt is seeking a Principal Staff Engineer-Web Platform to serve as a senior technical leader within our engineering organization and a key partner to the VP of Engineering. This is a highly hands-on role focused on building, operating, and scaling high-traffic ecommerce web platforms in a fast-moving production environment.

Reporting directly to the VP of Engineering, this engineer will play a critical role in architecting, developing, troubleshooting, and maintaining our LAMP-based web applications and AWS infrastructure. The ideal candidate is equally comfortable writing production code, diagnosing complex site reliability issues, managing cloud infrastructure, and leading technical problem-solving during high-severity incidents.

This role requires strong operational judgment and the ability to independently own production challenges across application, database, infrastructure, and deployment layers. The engineer will collaborate closely with our China-based development organization, serving as a senior US-based technical lead responsible for cross-team coordination, code quality, architectural guidance, and production stability.

This is an ideal opportunity for an experienced engineer who thrives in high-scale ecommerce environments and enjoys combining deep application engineering with modern cloud operations and production ownership.

PLEASE NOTE: Candidates much be local to or willing to relocate to the Calabasas area as we operate on a hybrid work model (3 days onsite, 2 remote)

What You’ll Do
Key Responsibilities

• Full-Stack Platform Engineering: Design, develop, and maintain scalable features and services across our LAMP-based ecommerce platform, with a strong focus on reliability, performance, maintainability, and operational excellence.
• Production Operations & Incident Response : Act as a senior technical escalation point for complex production incidents, troubleshooting issues across application, infrastructure, networking, database, CDN, and deployment layers. Lead root cause analysis and drive long-term stability improvements.
• AWS Infrastructure Ownership : Manage and optimize AWS infrastructure, including deployment architecture, scaling strategies, observability, security, disaster recovery, and cost efficiency. Partner closely with DevOps and engineering leadership on operational best practices.
• High-Scale Performance Optimization : Monitor and improve application, database, and infrastructure performance for high-traffic consumer web applications. Identify bottlenecks and implement scalable solutions to improve uptime, latency, and system resilience.
• Cross-Functional Technical Leadership: Partner with Product, Design, Operations, and Customer Experience teams to translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions and ensure successful project execution.
• Global Engineering Collaboration : Work closely with the China-based engineering team to coordinate development efforts, conduct code reviews, align on architectural direction, manage releases, and maintain strong engineering communication across time zones.
• Code Quality & Engineering Standards : Champion high engineering standards through code reviews, testing strategies, documentation, observability, and operational best practices. Drive continuous improvement in system reliability and development processes.
• Technical Mentorship & Leadership : Provide technical mentorship and architectural guidance across the engineering organization. Influence technical direction through hands-on leadership, strong execution, and collaborative problem-solving.

Requirements

What You Should Have
Skills, Qualifications, and Requirements

• Senior-Level Full-Stack Engineering Experience: 7+ years of professional experience building and operating large-scale web applications, including substantial hands-on experience with the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP).
• Strong AWS & Cloud Operations Expertise : Deep hands-on experience with AWS services and production cloud environments, including EC2, RDS, S3, Lambda, CloudWatch, networking, scaling, monitoring, and infrastructure troubleshooting.
• Ecommerce & High-Traffic Website Experience : Experience supporting high-volume consumer-facing websites or ecommerce platforms, with a strong understanding of scalability, uptime, performance optimization, and operational reliability.
• Production Troubleshooting Expertise : Demonstrated ability to diagnose and resolve complex production issues under pressure, including database replication issues, performance degradation, infrastructure failures, deployment issues, and site outages.
• Distributed Systems & Database Knowledge : Strong understanding of distributed web architectures, database performance tuning, replication strategies, caching, queuing systems, and fault-tolerant system design.
• Global Team Collaboration: Experience working effectively with offshore or globally distributed engineering teams, with strong communication, coordination, and cross-cultural collaboration skills.
• Chinese Language Skills: Ability to communicate in Mandarin (spoken or written) is highly desirable to facilitate collaboration with our China-based engineering team.
• Engineering Best Practices: Strong understanding of software engineering fundamentals including Git workflows, CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, observability, code review practices, and secure development standards.
• Ownership Mentality: Self-directed engineer with strong operational instincts, excellent judgment, and the ability to independently own critical technical initiatives from design through production support.
• Technical Leadership: Demonstrated ability to influence engineering direction, mentor developers, and drive technical excellence through hands-on leadership rather than direct people management.

What You Can Expect
Working Conditions

• Work is performed in an office environment with low to moderate noise levels.
• Position requires regular, continuous use of computer.
• Position requires regular sitting and standing.
• Position requires regular interaction with team members through the following methods: in-person, phone, Zoom, Slack, or email.
• May require occasional travel.
• This is a hybrid position; employees are expected to be in the office three days per week (Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday) with the option of working remotely two days (Wednesday and Friday).

Benefits

The compensation range for this position is $130,000-$195,000 annual salary.

PlanetArt offers a comprehensive benefits package, including:

• Health, Dental, and Vision Insurance
• Life Insurance
• Pet Insurance
• Mental Health Insurance
• 401(k) with matching
• Comprehensive Time Off Program including Paid Time Off, Sick Days, Paid Holidays, and Floating Holidays
• Employee Product Discounts