Senior Principal Software Engineer

Shutterfly•Tempe, AZ

3d•Remote

About The Position

Spoonflower, part of the Shutterfly family of brands, is evolving its eCommerce platform into a modern, service-oriented architecture for a global made-to-order retail environment. The Senior Principal Software Engineer will drive the design and evolution of core backend systems supporting the commerce experience. This is a deeply technical, hands-on role with ownership of major platform areas and close collaboration with engineers and other teams. The engineer will contribute to scaling the platform through Shopify integrations, GraphQL federation, and service-based systems. The role reports directly to the Director of Engineering. It may be performed remotely, provided the candidate resides in a state where Shutterfly is registered to do business. Applications are accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled. Compensation depends on factors such as job level, responsibilities, location, and candidate experience. Published base-pay ranges vary by location: California, $159,750–$225,500; Connecticut and New York, $159,750–$206,250; Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, and Washington, $159,750–$191,000; Nevada, $150,000–$206,250; Maryland and New Jersey, $172,500–$206,250; Hawaii, $150,000–$179,500. The position may be eligible for a bonus incentive, health benefits, a 401(k) program, and other employee perks.

Requirements

At least 8 years of experience in backend or platform engineering.
Strong experience building and operating distributed systems and APIs at scale.
Deep proficiency in GraphQL design and implementation, including federated or supergraph architectures.
Experience with Shopify or similar eCommerce platforms.
Strong experience with Node.js and TypeScript.
Track record of diagnosing difficult production failures down to the runtime or transport level, rather than simply restarting services.
Demonstrated ownership of production systems, including performance, uptime, and reliability.
Ability to work independently and drive ambiguous, high-impact work to completion.
Strong communication skills when discussing tradeoffs and system design decisions.

Nice To Haves

Hands-on experience with Apollo Federation supergraph architectures.
Experience with headless commerce architectures.
Familiarity with AWS event-driven messaging, including SNS/SQS.
Experience with OpenSearch or similar search and retrieval systems.
Experience operating services on Kubernetes with Terraform-managed infrastructure.
Experience integrating third-party commerce platforms at scale.
Exposure to frontend systems such as Next.js or React for API collaboration.

Responsibilities

Own the design and evolution of core backend services and APIs supporting commerce workflows.
Lead architecture and implementation of GraphQL services on the Apollo Federation supergraph.
Build and improve Shopify integrations, including Storefront API, Admin API, webhooks, and order lifecycle, as part of a cross-team effort.
Reconcile Shopify’s inventory-and-SKU commerce model with the made-to-order, print-on-demand fulfillment flow, including its order lifecycle.
Define and improve service boundaries, data models, and integration points across systems.
Partner with frontend, product, and platform teams to simplify how teams build and integrate.
Diagnose and resolve distributed-systems and runtime-level failures, including federation transport behavior, connection-pool issues, and event-loop performance under load.
Own production systems, including operability, observability, and incident response.
Serve as a technical reference through design reviews, mentoring, and setting engineering standards.
Influence roadmap decisions by communicating tradeoffs grounded in business and system impact.