Principal Engineer

ZealHire Inc.; Miami (FL); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 200,000; Part time

Job summary

ZealHire Inc. is seeking a Principal Engineer to shape the end-to-end architecture for a sophisticated eCommerce platform. This is a technically focused leadership role, not people management, with responsibility across frontend, backend, infra, and AI-driven tooling.

You will champion AI-assisted development and standardized integration patterns across React SPAs, AEM pages, and GraphQL services. The role emphasizes architectural vision, platform health, and cross-team collaboration to deliver

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience across frontend and backend
• Proven track record as a technical leader and senior individual contributor
• Expert-level knowledge of React, Next.js, SPA/micro frontend architecture
• Deep experience with AEM including headful/headless integration
• Hands-on production-grade AI/agentic solutions incl. autonomous agents and RAG
• Strong backend proficiency: Node.js, GraphQL, Java services
• Cloud-native infra: AWS, Kubernetes, CI/CD (GitHub Actions)
• DevSecOps, SOX compliance understanding and security mindset

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end technical roadmap for the ecommerce platform
• Define architectural standards for micro-frontend SPAs and AEM integrations
• Lead AI-augmented engineering initiatives and tool evaluation
• Coordinate cross-team collaboration to align platform standards
• Ensure platform health, performance, and security across workloads

Skills

Software architecture

Technical leadership

React

Next.js

AEM

Node.js

GraphQL

AI/GenAI

AWS

Kubernetes

Tools

Node.js

Fastify

GraphQL

Java

Redis

MongoDB

AWS

Kubernetes

Job description

Onsite 4x a week and remote on Fridays

Duration: 3-6 months CTH

Must be able to convert without sponsorship

As a Principal Engineer in our Global eCommerce Engineering organization, you will serve as the technical visionary and senior individual contributor responsible for shaping the end-to-end architecture, standards, and long-term roadmap of our digital commerce platform. This is not a people management role; it is a technical leadership role of the highest caliber, where your influence will be felt across everyengineering team, every layer of the stack, and every customer interaction on our platform.

Our ecommerce platform is built on a sophisticated micro-frontend architecture that blends React-based Single Page Applications (SPAs) with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) headful pages, backed by amodern Node.js/Java API layer, GraphQL federation, and cloud-native infrastructure on AWS. You will bethe connective tissue across all of these surfaces; setting unified standards, eliminating architecturalconflicts, defining integration patterns, and ensuring that our platform evolves with coherence and purpose.

Critically, you will be our AI champion. In an era of rapid GenAI adoption, you will lead the charge intransforming how our engineering community works. Embedding AI-assisted development into oureveryday practices, evaluating and standardizing AI tooling, and setting the example for what high-velocity,AI-augmented engineering looks like at scale.

You will be a key player in shaping how millions of customers consider, purchase, and plan their cruisevacations and in building the engineering culture that makes that possible.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

1. Full-Stack Technical Vision & Architecture

• Own and drive the end-to-end technical roadmap for the ecommerce platform, spanning frontend, backend, infrastructure, and integrations.
• Define and enforce architectural standards across our micro-frontend architecture — governing the interplay between React SPAs, AEM headful pages, and shared platform services.
• Establish integration patterns and design contracts that allow different application domain owners (e.g., booking, search, content, personalization) to build independently while composing seamlessly.
• Identify and resolve architectural conflicts and overlaps across teams before they become rework and serving as the central technical authority for cross-cutting design decisions.
• Champion scalable, maintainable, and high-performance architectures across the full stack, balancing pragmatism with long-term platform health.
• Lead technical discovery, POCs, and architectural reviews for new capabilities, platform modernization efforts, and emerging technology adoption.

2. Frontend Excellence & AEM Integration

• Define and enforce frontend architectural standards for all SPAs, micro-frontends, and AEM-integrated experiences.
• Own the technical strategy for React/AEM interoperability including component authoring models, client-side hydration, AEM Editable Templates, and content-driven experiences.
• Drive end-to-end frontend performance ownership: Core Web Vitals, bundle optimization, lazy loading, SSR/SSG strategies, and AEM component efficiency.
• Govern the Design System’s technical evolution, ensuring consistent implementation across all frontend surfaces and teams.
• Optimize AEM workflows for developer productivity, including local development environments and CI/CD pipeline integration.
• Enforce frontend coding standards, accessibility (a11y), and testing practices (unit, integration, E2E) across all teams.
• Provide technical leadership and standards for backend services powering the ecommerce platform, including GraphQL API layers, Node.js/Fastify microservices, and Java-based services.
• Define integration patterns between frontend and backend that minimize coupling, reduce duplication, and enable teams to iterate independently.
• Set standards and best practices for caching strategies (including Redis), data persistence (MongoDB), and service reliability.
• Guide infrastructure decisions in partnership with platform/DevOps teams — including AWS, Kubernetes, container orchestration, and CI/CD pipeline design using GitHub Actions and related tooling.
• Ensure backend services meet performance, security, and compliance standards (SOX, DevSecOps) consistent with operating in a highly regulated, high-transaction environment.
• Serve as the organization’s AI champion and leading by example in adopting AI-assisted coding and development practices across all engineering teams.
• Architect, design, and implement end-to-end agentic AI solutions and including autonomous multi-agent systems, tool-integrated reasoning workflows, and LLM orchestrated pipelines that deliver personalized, intelligent, and seamless customer experiences across the ecommerce platform, from cruise discovery and search to booking and post-purchase engagement.
• When not architecting world-class consumer-facing experiences, you are building internal tooling and agentic AI systems that optimize the entire SDLC, researching, evaluating, and standardizing GenAI tooling (e.g., Claude Code, AI code review tools, LLM-assisted development workflows) to drive engineering productivity, code quality, and delivery velocity at scale.
• Develop and share best practices, playbooks, and workshops that enable engineers across the organization to effectively leverage AI in their daily workflows.
• Drive the cultural shift toward AI-augmented engineering, reducing friction, building confidence, and positioning our engineering community as leaders in AI assisted software development within the travel and ecommerce industry.
• Collaborate with engineering managers and product leaders to identify high-impact opportunities where AI/GenAI can accelerate platform development, improve quality, or unlock new customer experiences.
• Stay at the forefront of AI/GenAI advancements relevant to software engineering and bring recommendations to leadership on emerging tools, techniques, and risks.

5. Cross-Team Collaboration & Technical Alignment

• Partner with engineering managers, product managers, UX designers, and QA leads to design cohesive end-to-end solutions across the platform.
• Advise application domain owners on technical feasibility, trade-offs, and integration approaches and ensuring platform-level concerns are not sacrificed for local team velocity.
• Act as a bridge between technical complexity and business goals, translating strategic priorities into actionable technical direction and communicating technical constraints in terms stakeholders can act on.
• Proactively surface and resolve cross-team dependencies before they block delivery.
• Elevate the technical craft of the engineering organization through code reviews, architecture reviews, technical writing, workshops, and hands-on pairing.
• Define and maintain platform-wide engineering standards, patterns, and documentation that reduce ambiguity and accelerate onboarding.
• Identify and develop the next generation of technical leaders across the ecommerce engineering teams.
• Foster a culture of engineering excellence, psychological safety, and continuous improvement.

7. Platform Health & Strategic Initiatives

• Lead tech debt reduction initiatives with measurable outcomes and clear prioritization frameworks.
• Establish and monitor platform health metrics, performance, reliability, security posture, and developer experience and drive continuous improvement against these benchmarks.
• Champion long-term platform investments alongside near-term delivery, ensuring the codebase remains a competitive advantage rather than a liability.

Qualifications, Knowledge & Skills:

Required:

• 10+ years of software engineering experience with demonstrated depth across both frontend and backend disciplines.
• Proven track record as a technical leader and senior individual contributor and setting standards, driving architecture, and influencing across teams without direct management authority.
• Expert-level knowledge of modern frontend technologies: React, Next.js, micro frontend architecture, SPAs, and component-driven design.
• Deep experience with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) including headful/headless integration patterns, Editable Templates, component authoring, and frontend/AEM interoperability.
• Hands-on experience designing and implementing production-grade agentic AI solutions including autonomous agents, multi-agent orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen), tool-integrated reasoning workflows, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines with demonstrated ability to take agentic systems from proof-of-concept through scalable production deployment.
• Strong backend proficiency: Node.js, Fastify, GraphQL (federation and schema design), and Java services.
• Solid understanding of caching strategies (Redis), database design (MongoDB), and API performance patterns.
• Experience with cloud-native infrastructure: AWS, Kubernetes, container-based deployments, and GitHub Actions-based CI/CD pipelines.
• Strong grasp of DevSecOps practices, compliance requirements (SOX), and security standards in regulated environments.
• Exceptional ability to communicate technical vision, trade-offs, and architectural decisions to both engineering and non-engineering audiences.

$000,000 – $000,000 Salary range is not shown on the candidate portal