Principal Engineer — AI-Enabled Developer Platform

Recreational Equipment, Inc.; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 208,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Employee discount

Health benefits

Retirement savings plan

Paid time off

Job summary

REI is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join the Engineering Enablement team in Seattle. You will shape the future of REI's developer platform, enabling AI-assisted software delivery, modern platform engineering, and safe AI adoption across the SDLC.

Collaborate with Architecture, Security, Infrastructure, and Product teams to define capabilities, guardrails, and standards that empower both traditional development and AI-powered engineering.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience, preferably with Java.
• 5+ years leading system architecture for scalable, reliable systems.
• Experience designing developer platforms and cloud platforms.
• Proven ability to influence technical direction across teams.
• Strong communication of technical concepts to technical and business audiences.

Responsibilities

• Define and lead the vision for REI's Developer Platform and AI-enabled workflows.
• Partner with engineers, architects, and product leaders to deliver platform capabilities.
• Provide technical and architectural leadership for scalable, secure platform services.
• Mentor Senior and Staff Engineers in architecture and engineering excellence.
• Drive platform strategy and guardrails for AI-enabled developer workflows.
• Lead evolution of SDLC practices to include AI across design, development, testing, and operations.
• Champion platform reliability, observability, and responsible AI adoption.
• Identify and address technical debt and process inefficiencies with automation.

Skills

Java

Leadership

Cloud-native

Architecture design

Platform engineering

AI in software dev

Communication

Mentoring

Tools

Kubernetes

Docker

CI/CD

Terraform

Job description

REI is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to join the Engineering Enablement team in Seattle. You will shape the future of REI's developer platform, enabling AI-assisted software delivery, modern platform engineering, and safe AI adoption across the SDLC.

Collaborate with Architecture, Security, Infrastructure, and Product teams to define capabilities, guardrails, and standards that empower both traditional development and AI-powered engineering.