Principal Engineer

Adventure is our Culture. Join a team that celebrates a lifestyle as bold as the terrain we love. At Backcountry, we are rooted in adventure, recognition, and wellbeing on and off the mountain. We spotlight employee stories, celebrate milestones, and offer exclusive outdoor perks. Whether you are at HQ, in a retail store, or remote, you will be part of a team that thrives on energy, exploration, and connection.

Reports to: Sr. Director of IT

Location: Cottonwood Heights, Utah (Hybrid - 3x/week in-office) or Remote (United States)

Backcountry needs a foundational technical leader who can own architecture, quality, and engineering standards across the e-commerce platform powering five outdoor and powersports brands. As Principal Engineer, Application Development
, you will lead a team of developers building the fulfillment and order management systems our customers rely on, while driving AI-powered innovation that raises engineering throughput and reliability.

At six to twelve months, success looks like a meaningfully improved platform architecture, measurable reductions in technical debt, and a development team operating at higher velocity with cleaner, more maintainable code.

This is a lean team. You will own a lot, move fast, and make decisions with full end-to-end responsibility.

• Spearhead AI technical innovation by designing AI and agentic workflows that empower engineering teams; leverage best-in-class AI toolsets to improve engineering delivery throughput, quality, and reliability.
• Design, develop, and maintain fulfillment systems (warehouse management, order management, etc.) that power the e-commerce platform, ensuring scalability, performance, and long-term maintainability.
• Lead a small team of developers in the design, development, and testing of software solutions, providing clear technical direction and accountability.
• Enable other engineering stakeholders and their teams to integrate quickly with fulfillment system interfaces by surfacing clean API documentation, observability monitoring, and alerting that give consumers of your systems a high level of dependability.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams across product, design, and operations to ensure successful and timely delivery of projects.
• Design and implement agentic quality gates that enable rapid iteration with a safety net developers can trust.
• Act as a technical mentor for engineers at all levels, providing hands-on guidance on software development best practices.
• Represent Backcountry s core values through your technical decisions and team interactions.

• 10+ years of experience in software development with a strong background in e-commerce fulfillment, including order management and warehouse management.
• Experience leveraging best-in-class AI tooling to accelerate development.
• Deep expertise in Java, Spring Framework, Spring Boot, and Node.js.
• Strong understanding of software architecture and design patterns with demonstrated experience applying them at enterprise scale.
• Expertise with relational databases and SQL, including query optimization.
• Expertise with No
  
  SQL and document-oriented databases.
• Expertise with Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, and CI/CD tooling.
• Experience with cloud platforms, specifically GCP or AWS.
• Proven track record of leading software development teams and delivering high-quality, production-grade software.
• Excellent communication skills in English; ability to operate effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to think creatively under constraint.

• Experience in outdoor retail, multi-brand e-commerce, or similar high-SKU retail environments.
• Familiarity with omni-channel fulfillment and order management systems at scale.
• Familiarity with ERP enterprise systems such as Net Suite.

The people who do best here are builders. They take ownership, move fast, and want to see the direct impact of their work.

• Team Impact: Lead platform architecture for five outdoor and powersports brands, building and guiding a development team with direct ownership of their outcomes and visibility to…