Principal Engineer - Catalog

Remote, California, United States of America Technology R106999 Posted 10/07/2026

For A Better You At iHerb, we believe that living a healthy and balanced life should be easy and accessible to everyone. As a team member, we’ll empower you to live this promise each day as you make a truly global impact in your career. We constantly strive for innovation, while transforming and improving the online shopping experience for our customers.

We believe that individually we are incredible, but when we come together, our growth is infinite. In an industry that is constantly evolving, we are on a mission to make an impact on the global market, and the individual and collaborative efforts of our people are paramount to helping us succeed. Whether you work in one of our logistics centers, technology hubs, corporate offices or even from home, your role at iHerb will take you beyond what’s expected, turning challenge into change.

If you're ready for it, we want you to join our team.

The Principal Engineer - Catalog operates at the intersection of deep technical execution and broad organizational influence. This role will resolve the hardest architectural questions, set the AI-native engineering bar, and ensure that iHerb's platform decisions compound over time rather than accumulate debt. Reporting to the VP of Engineering this role collaborates closely with peer Principals, Engineering Managers, and peer VPs across the organization.

• Define and own the catalog platform architecture: service design, data modeling, API contracts, and technology choices across the stack.
• Lead the technical scoping and execution of the catalog modernization effort, coordinating with the Catalog EM and cross-functional partners.
• Hands-on contributor: write production code, build proofs of concept, and validate architecture through working software.
• Set and enforce technical standards for the Catalog team; drive code reviews and architecture reviews.
• Identify and resolve cross-cutting technical dependencies with peer engineering teams and shared platform services.
• Contribute catalog-specific patterns and lessons into iHerb's shared AI-driven SDLC golden path.
• Drive the hardest cross-cutting technical decisions across multiple teams and shared platform services.
• Establish and evolve iHerb's AI-driven SDLC golden path: shared standards, Claude Code skills, guardrails, and automation patterns.
• Lead complex multi-team technical efforts by coordinating architecture reviews, aligning peer Principals and EMs, and resolving competing approaches.
• Mentor and raise the technical bar across the engineering organization through code review, architecture review and direct coaching of senior engineers.
• Represent engineering in cross-functional conversations with product, data science, security, and infrastructure.
• Feed architectural decisions into the shared knowledge base so institutional knowledge compounds across the organization.

The duties and responsibilities described above may provide only a partial description of this position. This is not an exhaustive list of all aspects of the job. Other duties and responsibilities not outlined in this document may be added as necessary or desirable, with or without notice.

Required:

• AI-driven SDLC (required): demonstrated use of AI‑assisted development tools such as Claude Code, Git Hub Copilot, or Cursor to ship production systems. Can articulate workflow changes, quality tradeoffs, and guardrail strategies.
• Architecture at scale: experience designing and evolving large-scale distributed systems across multiple teams and years: APIs, data pipelines, event-driven architectures, or high-traffic platforms.
• Cross‑org technical leadership: track…