Principal Engineer - Digital Commerce & Customer Platform (Hybrid - Seattle, WA)

Nordstrom•Seattle, WA

3d•$191,000 - $297,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Come join us in a key technical leadership role revolutionizing the digital customer experience at Nordstrom! We are modernizing our digital commerce technology stack and building next-generation customer platform capabilities that power seamless shopping experiences across web, mobile, and omnichannel touchpoints. We are seeking an experienced Principal Engineer to lead the design and implementation of cutting-edge solutions across our checkout, payments, fraud prevention, order management, and customer identity platforms. This role will drive the technical strategy for how customers discover, purchase, and manage their Nordstrom experience, enabling secure transactions and personalized service that set Nordstrom apart. A Day in the Life... Architect scalable, reliable digital commerce and transaction solutions that serve millions of customers and process high-volume transactions across multiple channels Lead the technical vision for evolving our checkout and payment ecosystem, driving the conversation around next-generation capabilities while ensuring solutions are performant, secure, and provide exceptional user experiences across web and mobile platforms Drive technical excellence across engineering teams, establishing best practices for distributed systems, real-time transaction processing, fraud detection, payment security, and system resilience Champion operational excellence by driving improvements in observability, telemetry, monitoring, and automation that reduce toil and increase system reliability Lead the technical strategy for building and expanding modern commerce capabilities across digital and physical channels, ensuring the platform can meet the needs of diverse customer touchpoints and expectations Collaborate with cross-functional teams including product, digital operations, customer experience, merchandising, and business stakeholders to understand requirements and deliver solutions that drive business impact Design and implement systems that enable seamless omni-channel customer journeys, integrating checkout, order management, customer identity, and purchase history to create unified customer engagement Provide technical leadership as an individual contributor, mentoring and influencing senior engineers through code reviews, design discussions, and architectural guidance Evangelize and drive adoption of AI technologies across engineering teams to accelerate productivity, improve code quality, and increase speed of delivery through intelligent tooling and automation Drive innovation by staying current with the latest advances in e-commerce technology, payment systems, fraud prevention, and digital customer experience platforms Ensure system reliability and transaction integrity across all customer touchpoints, implementing proper alerting, incident response capabilities, and automation to prevent issues Lead architectural discussions spanning checkout, payments, fraud, order management, and customer identity domains, making key technical decisions that shape the future of digital commerce technology at Nordstrom Partner with platform and enterprise services teams to ensure cohesive integration across the enterprise technology ecosystem You Own This If You Have... 10+ years of relevant work experience in software engineering with significant focus on e-commerce systems, digital payments, distributed architectures, or customer-facing applications Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, with a master's degree preferred, or equivalent experience 4+ years of technical leadership experience as an individual contributor, influencing engineering teams and driving technical direction in dynamic, high-scale e-commerce or digital retail environments Strong mentoring capabilities with a track record of developing engineers' technical skills and helping them grow their expertise in complex domains Deep expertise in transaction processing systems, including checkout architecture, payment processing, fraud detection, and real-time financial systems with strong security and compliance requirements Strong background in distributed systems design, including experience with microservices architectures, event-driven systems, and handling high-volume transaction workloads Experience with cloud platforms and modern technology stacks for building resilient, scalable customer-facing applications Proven track record of building production-grade systems that handle business-critical operations with high availability requirements (99.95%+ uptime) Experience designing systems with API integration patterns, asynchronous processing, and data consistency strategies across distributed services Strong architectural software, service, and infrastructure design patterns with capabilities, demonstrating the ability to discuss, influence, and make trade-off decisions at multiple system levels Deep commitment to operational excellence, including expertise in observability tools, automated testing, deployment automation, and proactive monitoring Customer-focused mindset with ability to translate business requirements into technical solutions and communicate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders Experience with regulatory compliance, PCI-DSS, payment security, fraud prevention frameworks, and data privacy especially as it relates to customer and transaction data Demonstrated ability to drive technical innovation while balancing practical business needs, operational constraints, and system stability

Requirements

10+ years of relevant work experience in software engineering with significant focus on e-commerce systems, digital payments, distributed architectures, or customer-facing applications
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, with a master's degree preferred, or equivalent experience
4+ years of technical leadership experience as an individual contributor, influencing engineering teams and driving technical direction in dynamic, high-scale e-commerce or digital retail environments
Strong mentoring capabilities with a track record of developing engineers' technical skills and helping them grow their expertise in complex domains
Deep expertise in transaction processing systems, including checkout architecture, payment processing, fraud detection, and real-time financial systems with strong security and compliance requirements
Strong background in distributed systems design, including experience with microservices architectures, event-driven systems, and handling high-volume transaction workloads
Experience with cloud platforms and modern technology stacks for building resilient, scalable customer-facing applications
Proven track record of building production-grade systems that handle business-critical operations with high availability requirements (99.95%+ uptime)
Experience designing systems with API integration patterns, asynchronous processing, and data consistency strategies across distributed services
Strong architectural software, service, and infrastructure design patterns with capabilities, demonstrating the ability to discuss, influence, and make trade-off decisions at multiple system levels
Deep commitment to operational excellence, including expertise in observability tools, automated testing, deployment automation, and proactive monitoring
Customer-focused mindset with ability to translate business requirements into technical solutions and communicate complex technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders
Experience with regulatory compliance, PCI-DSS, payment security, fraud prevention frameworks, and data privacy especially as it relates to customer and transaction data
Demonstrated ability to drive technical innovation while balancing practical business needs, operational constraints, and system stability

Nice To Haves

Experience modernizing legacy e-commerce platforms or payment systems
Background in omni-channel retail technology and unified commerce platforms
Previous experience leading large-scale technology migrations or platform consolidations across multiple business units
Experience with machine learning or AI-driven fraud detection and prevention systems
Track record of implementing observability and automation improvements that significantly reduced operational overhead
Experience with customer identity and access management (CIAM) platforms and authentication/authorization patterns
Background in order management systems and fulfillment orchestration across multiple channels

Responsibilities

Architect scalable, reliable digital commerce and transaction solutions that serve millions of customers and process high-volume transactions across multiple channels
Lead the technical vision for evolving our checkout and payment ecosystem, driving the conversation around next-generation capabilities while ensuring solutions are performant, secure, and provide exceptional user experiences across web and mobile platforms
Drive technical excellence across engineering teams, establishing best practices for distributed systems, real-time transaction processing, fraud detection, payment security, and system resilience
Champion operational excellence by driving improvements in observability, telemetry, monitoring, and automation that reduce toil and increase system reliability
Lead the technical strategy for building and expanding modern commerce capabilities across digital and physical channels, ensuring the platform can meet the needs of diverse customer touchpoints and expectations
Collaborate with cross-functional teams including product, digital operations, customer experience, merchandising, and business stakeholders to understand requirements and deliver solutions that drive business impact
Design and implement systems that enable seamless omni-channel customer journeys, integrating checkout, order management, customer identity, and purchase history to create unified customer engagement
Provide technical leadership as an individual contributor, mentoring and influencing senior engineers through code reviews, design discussions, and architectural guidance
Evangelize and drive adoption of AI technologies across engineering teams to accelerate productivity, improve code quality, and increase speed of delivery through intelligent tooling and automation
Drive innovation by staying current with the latest advances in e-commerce technology, payment systems, fraud prevention, and digital customer experience platforms
Ensure system reliability and transaction integrity across all customer touchpoints, implementing proper alerting, incident response capabilities, and automation to prevent issues
Lead architectural discussions spanning checkout, payments, fraud, order management, and customer identity domains, making key technical decisions that shape the future of digital commerce technology at Nordstrom
Partner with platform and enterprise services teams to ensure cohesive integration across the enterprise technology ecosystem