Principal Engineer (Backend), Commerce Platform

Autodesk•Portland, OR

1d•$139,000 - $249,260

About The Position

Autodesk is building a shared AI-assisted commerce platform that enables AI copilots and agents to safely discover, recommend, and transact Autodesk offerings. As a Principal Engineer, you will design and build the core APIs and orchestration layer (MCP) that connects AI systems to Autodesk’s commerce infrastructure—pricing, subscriptions, entitlements, and checkout—with enterprise-grade reliability, security, and governance. This role sits at the intersection of platform engineering, distributed systems, and applied AI enablement.

Requirements

10+ years building and operating production backend/platform systems
Deep knowledge of distributed systems: scaling, failure modes, consistency, caching, queues/streams, concurrency, idempotency, and backpressure
Strong backend proficiency in one or more languages (e.g., Java/Kotlin, Node Js), plus strong API design (REST/gRPC) and data modeling
Experience with cloud-native systems (Kubernetes, CI/CD, IaC), and building reliable services with modern observability
Proven ability to lead cross-team initiatives through ambiguity, balancing platform correctness, security, and product velocity

Nice To Haves

Experience designing platforms for automation/agents (workflow orchestration, tool routing, policy engines, approvals, audit trails)
Commerce domain exposure: pricing catalogs, subscription lifecycle, entitlement checks, tax/payment/checkout flows
Multi-tenant enterprise patterns: tenant isolation, RBAC/ABAC, compliance-minded logging, data retention
Experience building internal platforms with adoption metrics, SDKs, and versioned contracts
Success in this role looks like AI copilots and agents can reliably and safely complete commerce tasks using your MCP layer (with strong auditability and guardrails)
Integrations with pricing/subscription/entitlements/checkout become simpler, standardized, and faster for teams to adopt
Platform reliability improves measurably (SLO attainment, incident reduction, faster recovery) while maintaining strict security and governance

Responsibilities

Build the AI-to-commerce orchestration layer (MCP): Design and implement the runtime and APIs that allow copilots/agents to invoke commerce capabilities safely and consistently (e.g., product discovery → pricing → eligibility/entitlements → checkout)
Define “agent-safe” platform primitives: Create standardized patterns for tool invocation (idempotency, retries, rate limits, validation), error contracts, and deterministic behaviors suitable for LLM/agent workflows
Integrate with core commerce systems: Build adapters and service interfaces to existing commerce capabilities (pricing, subscriptions, entitlements, checkout), including backward compatibility and rollout strategies
Enterprise reliability & operability: Own service SLOs/SLIs, observability (logs/metrics/traces), resilience patterns, and incident readiness; drive post-incident improvements
Security & governance by design: Implement strong authN/authZ, tenant isolation, secrets management, auditability, policy enforcement, and safe guardrails around agent actions (approvals, constraints, and traceability)
Platform quality and developer experience: Provide SDKs, documentation, reference implementations, and golden paths so product teams can integrate agents quickly and safely
Technical leadership at P4 scope: Drive architecture decisions across teams, lead design reviews/RFCs, mentor engineers, and influence roadmaps across the commerce + AI ecosystem

Benefits

From health and financial benefits to time away and everyday wellness, we give Autodeskers the best, so they can do their best work.
Learn more about our benefits in the U.S. by visiting https://benefits.autodesk.com/

Stand Out From the Crowd

Upload your resume and get instant feedback on how well it matches this job.

Upload and Match Resume