Principal Software Engineer - Retail Technology

Intellibus is building a strategic transformation partnership with a $7B+ U.S. grocery retailer, starting with a focused engagement and with the potential to grow into a $20–30M+ annual relationship over the next several years.

Hybrid role based in or near Phoenix, AZ (client HQ proximity required)

We are seeking a senior leader who can help us incubate, lead, and grow this relationship — combining deep retail/grocery context with executive-level client leadership and technology transformation experience.

We are looking for a Staff Software Engineer to drive technology-led transformation across complex retail and omnichannel environments.

This individual will combine strong software engineering and architectural expertise with a deep understanding of retail business processes, digital commerce, and AI-driven innovation.

The ideal candidate is a hands-on technical leader who can work closely with business stakeholders, product teams, and engineering organizations to identify opportunities, define scalable solutions, and translate business challenges into measurable technology outcomes.

This role requires engineering excellence, consulting capabilities, retail domain knowledge, and the ability to influence technical and business decisions across multiple teams.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Architecture:

• Lead the architecture, design, and development of scalable, resilient, and high-performance enterprise applications.
• Define architectural patterns, engineering standards, and best practices across distributed systems and microservices.
• Design and implement robust APIs and integrations across enterprise platforms using REST and GraphQL.
• Drive technical roadmaps, architecture reviews, technology evaluations, and build-versus-buy decisions.
• Identify opportunities to modernize legacy applications, simplify complex systems, and improve platform scalability.
• Mentor engineers and provide technical direction across multiple engineering teams.

Retail & Omnichannel Transformation

• Partner with retail business and technology stakeholders to understand challenges across digital commerce, store operations, merchandising, inventory, and customer experience.
• Design technology solutions that enable seamless omnichannel experiences across digital and physical retail channels.
• Evaluate existing systems and workflows to identify opportunities for modernization, automation, and operational improvement.
• Integrate enterprise applications, APIs, data platforms, and digital customer-facing systems to support connected retail experiences.
• Translate retail business requirements into scalable technical architectures and implementation roadmaps.

AI & Digital Transformation

• Identify opportunities to apply generative AI, machine learning, intelligent automation, and AI agents to retail business processes.
• Collaborate with AI and data teams to integrate intelligent capabilities into enterprise applications and workflows.
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies and assess their feasibility, scalability, security, and business value.
• Help define AI-enabled solutions for workflow automation, decision support, personalization, forecasting, and operational efficiency.
• Establish appropriate engineering practices for AI integration, governance, monitoring, and production readiness.

Consulting & Stakeholder Engagement

• Work directly with business leaders, product managers, architects, and engineering teams to understand business objectives and technical constraints.
• Facilitate discovery sessions, assess existing workflows, and identify opportunities for technology-led transformation.
• Present architectural recommendations, technical trade-offs, and implementation strategies to technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
• Connect…