Principal Software Engineer

Follett Corporation•Westchester, IL

About The Position

Follett Higher Education is an educational service provider and omnichannel retailer supporting students, faculty and staff, parents, and fans with course materials, learning tools, and retail services. It supports over 6 million students through 1,100 physical and 1,750 eCommerce campus stores across North America. The Principal Software Engineer is the senior-most individual contributor in engineering. This hands-on role designs, builds, and ships production software for the most complex and highest-risk work while setting technical direction and architecture across engineering teams. The Principal promotes engineering excellence through reference implementations, code and design reviews, and mentorship, and partners with engineering and product leadership to align technical strategy with business goals.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree or equivalent in a related discipline.
10 or more years of experience in software engineering.
Recent, sustained hands-on development of production systems, with writing and shipping code remaining a core part of the role.
Deep expertise in AWS, Python, and JavaScript/TypeScript.
Working proficiency in C#.
Experience with relational databases such as PostgreSQL and MSSQL.
Proven track record of designing and delivering large-scale, distributed systems.
Experience setting technical direction and architecture across multiple teams or an engineering organization.
Experience leading legacy modernization and cloud-native migration.
Excellent problem-solving skills with a focus on pragmatic, high-impact solutions.
Strong communication skills and the ability to explain complex technical concepts to technical and non-technical stakeholders, including executives.

Responsibilities

Design, build, and ship production code for the most complex, high-risk, or cross-team work on the product roadmap.
Own technical outcomes across engineering from design through production.
Build reference implementations, prototypes, and proofs of concept that establish patterns adopted across engineering.
Lead code and design reviews on high-impact changes, focusing on design and long-term maintainability.
Lead responses to critical production incidents through resolution and root-cause fixes.
Define and evolve the engineering-wide target architecture and technical roadmap, balancing scalability, cost, and maintainability against delivery constraints.
Set multi-year technical direction and sequence initiatives to achieve it; identify cross-team risks and dependencies early.
Make and document build-versus-buy, platform, and technical-debt investment recommendations through written design proposals.
Personally drive cloud-native adoption on AWS, legacy system transformation, and platform standardization.
Raise engineering standards across teams for CI/CD, observability, automated testing, and automation.
Mentor senior engineers and technical leads through pairing, code review, and design feedback, and develop future technical leaders.
Partner with Directors of Engineering on technical strategy, priorities, and sequencing.
Advise the VP of Engineering, product, and business leadership on technical strategy, trade-offs, and risks in business terms.
Serve as the senior technical escalation point across engineering and resolve technical disagreements between teams.