Principal Software Engineer, Back End

CD Baby•Nashville, TN

7d•$180,000 - $205,000•Remote

About The Position

CD Baby is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead back-end engineering for their customer-facing software, including the artist-facing distribution platform and the .com marketing site. This is a hands-on, individual-contributor role with significant technical authority and mentorship responsibilities. The role involves leading a platform migration to Azure cloud and architecting the evolution of the .NET monolith into a modular, API-driven, service-based architecture. The engineer will also partner with a cross-functional agile team to deliver new features and improvements, ensuring modernization efforts are paired with tangible customer value. This position is ideal for an engineer who thrives on both shipping dependable software and redesigning underlying systems.

Requirements

10+ years of progressive back end software engineering experience, with a meaningful portion in deep technical leadership roles (Principal, Staff, or equivalent IC).
Demonstrated track record of leading the decomposition of a monolithic application into a service-based architecture in production, while keeping the product operational throughout.
Deep, current expertise in .NET (C#) and SQL Server, including operating them at scale in containerized environments on a major cloud (Azure preferred; AWS or GCP experience translates).
Working fluency in at least one of Go, Node.js, or Python, and a clear point of view on when to reach for each.
Comfort selecting and operating data stores beyond a single relational default (e.g., Postgres, key-value, document, search, columnar) based on the workload.
Strong experience with ORMs (Entity Framework, Dapper, or equivalents) and a clear point of view on schema design, data modeling, migrations, and the trade-offs between ORM convenience and query performance at scale.
Hands-on experience designing API contracts (REST, GraphQL, gRPC) between front end and back end teams, including versioning, evolution, and contract testing.
Strong grasp of CI/CD, automated testing strategies, observability, and the operational disciplines that make continuous delivery safe at scale.
Experience partnering with data engineering on analytical pipelines, ideally including a modern warehouse such as Snowflake, BigQuery, or Redshift.
Ability to make and defend architectural decisions, and equally to change your mind when the evidence warrants.
Comfort working inside an existing, valuable codebase rather than rewriting it.
Relentless focus on shipping customer value in tight cycles, including during architectural transitions.
Ability to raise the people around you through the quality of your work, the clarity of your reviews, and your willingness to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with another engineer to solve a hard problem.
Ability to explain trade-offs to engineers, product partners, and executives with equal precision — in writing, in design docs, and in person.
Ability to partner naturally with product, design, data, QA, and infrastructure, and to treat those partnerships as core to the engineering work.
Relentless focus on translating technical investments into measurable artist value, with comfort working directly with customer data and feedback.

Nice To Haves

Music, media, or entertainment industry experience is welcome but not required.

Responsibilities

Define and drive the multi-year architectural evolution of CD Baby’s customer-facing platform from a .NET monolith to a modular, service-based architecture with clean API contracts between front end and back end.
Decompose the monolith into encapsulated services aligned to the core domains of the product — distribution, royalties, analytics, catalog management, account — with clear ownership, contracts, and operational boundaries.
Choose the right language and the right data store for each service, allowing for future use of Go, Node, Python, and other languages alongside .NET, and selecting data stores that fit the workload.
Own the application data model end-to-end, setting ORM patterns, schema design, and data access conventions for the back end team.
Partner with Data Engineering to design data models and pipelines that flow cleanly into Snowflake for analytics and reporting.
Write production code as a Principal IC, influencing through work as much as design.
Help complete the platform cloud migration to Azure, ensuring the back end matches the quality of the front end work.
Establish and uphold engineering standards across the back end, including CI/CD, automated testing, observability, performance, and security.
Run a continuous-delivery cadence, interleaving modernization with shipping new features and improvements each quarter.
Set the tone for back end craftsmanship on the team and mentor engineers through example and collaboration.
Collaborate closely with a cross-functional Platform team including front end, SDET, data engineering, design, and product management.
Partner with infrastructure, internal tools, and the broader data engineering organization on consequential architectural decisions.