Principal Software Engineer

Radwell International; Downers Grove (IL); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Radwell International is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to set the technical direction for the eCommerce platform and related systems. With 15+ years of experience, you will own long-term architecture, drive cloud modernization, and mentor engineers while contributing hands-on in design, development, and delivery.

You will lead architecture governance, author ADRs, and guide the technology roadmap for the next several years, collaborating across regions and teams.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of software engineering experience.
• Experience with large-scale eCommerce platforms and distributed systems.
• Strong design and architectural governance capabilities.
• Hands-on coding across multiple languages and tech stacks.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction for the eCommerce platform and adjacent systems.
• Lead architecture decisions and ADRs, participate in ARB processes.
• Mentor engineers and shape engineering culture and standards.
• Write production code and drive cloud modernization initiatives.

Skills

Microservices design

DDD (Domain-Driven Design)

Architectural governance

Leadership & mentoring

Hands-on coding

Tools

Azure cloud

Architectural ADRs

Kubernetes

CI/CD pipelines

Job description

Job Summary

The Principal Software Engineer operates at the intersection of deep technical execution, enterprise architecture, and engineering leadership, setting the technical direction for the eCommerce platform and adjacent systems while remaining actively hands‑on in design, development, and delivery. With 15+ years of progressive engineering experience, the Principal Engineer owns the long‑term application and solution architecture of Radwell’s ecosystems, drives cloud modernization initiatives, and shapes the engineering culture through mentorship, coaching, and principled technical governance. This engineer is the technical authority others turn to for hard architecture decisions, cross‑team alignment, and setting engineering standards. They lead from the front, writing production code, authoring architectural decision records, participating in the Architecture Review Board, and building the technology roadmap that guides the organization’s next three to five years.

Category

IT & Software Development

Job Location

Downers Grove, IL, US

Additional Locations

Willingboro, NJ, US

Position Type

Full-Time/Regular

Job Summary

The Principal Software Engineer operates at the intersection of deep technical execution, enterprise architecture, and engineering leadership, setting the technical direction for the eCommerce platform and adjacent systems while remaining actively hands‑on in design, development, and delivery. With 15+ years of progressive engineering experience, the Principal Engineer owns the long‑term application and solution architecture of Radwell’s ecosystems, drives cloud modernization initiatives, and shapes the engineering culture through mentorship, coaching, and principled technical governance. This engineer is the technical authority others turn to for hard architecture decisions, cross‑team alignment, and setting engineering standards. They lead from the front, writing production code, authoring architectural decision records, participating in the Architecture Review Board, and building the technology roadmap that guides the organization’s next three to five years.

Technical Requirements

eCommerce Platform & Distributed Systems

• 15+ years of software engineering experience with deep, demonstrable expertise in large‑scale eCommerce platforms spanning catalog, product, cart, checkout, payments, search, SEO, CDN, and multi‑region internationalized storefronts.
• Expert‑level experience designing and operating microservice architectures, including service decomposition strategies, API contracts, inter‑service communication patterns (synchronous REST/GraphQL and asynchronous messaging), and service mesh concepts.
• Hands‑on experience architecting and implementing micro‑frontend architectures, including module federation, independent deployment of front‑end domains, shared component libraries, and cross‑team front‑end governance.
• Deep expertise in Event‑Driven Architecture (EDA), including event sourcing, CQRS, saga orchestration and choreography, idempotency, and at‑least‑once delivery guarantees using platforms such as Kafka, Azure Service Bus, or Event Hub.
• Proven experience designing multi‑region, geo‑distributed platforms with full internationalization (i18n) and localization (l10n) support, including multi‑language content, regional pricing, currency handling, and compliance‑aware data residency.
• Strong command of CDN strategy (Cloudflare, Akamai, Azure Front Door), edge caching, cache invalidation at scale, and performance budgeting across global storefronts.

Application & Solution Architecture

• Demonstrated experience serving as a hands‑on application and solution architect, owning end‑to‑end system design from domain modeling through deployment topology and operational readiness.
• Deep proficiency in Domain Driven Design (DDD), including strategic design (bounded contexts, context mapping, ubiquitous language) and tactical design (aggregates, domain events, repositories, value objects, factories).
• Expert‑level knowledge of software design patterns (GoF, SOLID, GRASP) and architectural patterns (clean architecture, hexagonal/ports‑and‑adapters, CQRS, event sourcing, strangler fig, anti‑corruption layer) applied at enterprise scale.
• Experience leading and participating in Architecture Review Board (ARB) processes, including proposal authoring, design review facilitation, standards enforcement, and post‑implementation review.
• Track record of building and owning architecture guilds or communities of practice that elevate engineering quality across multiple teams.
• Experience authoring and governing Architectural Decision Records (ADRs), architecture principles, and engineering standards documentation used across engineering organizations.

Full‑Stack Engineering

• Expert‑level proficiency in React.js and Next.js, including server‑side rendering (SSR) for dynamic personalized pages, static site generation (SSG) and incremental static regeneration (ISR) for high‑performance catalog and content pages, and the Next.js App Router with React Server Components and nested layouts.
• Expert‑level command of TypeScript for building maintainable, type‑safe front‑end and full‑stack applications at scale.
• Proficiency with modern CSS approaches, including CSS Modules, Tailwind CSS, and design token systems, and deep understanding of responsive, accessible UI implementation.
• Experience optimizing front‑end performance through route‑level code splitting, lazy loading of images and non‑critical components.
• Expert‑level proficiency in C# and .NET Core, Java, Python, Go, middleware pipeline design, dependency injection, and high‑throughput service optimization.
• Proficiency with relational (SQL Server, PostgreSQL) and NoSQL (Redis, Cosmos DB, MongoDB) databases, including query optimization, indexing strategies, and data modeling for eCommerce workloads.

Cloud Engineering & DevOps

• Expert‑level hands‑on experience with Microsoft Azure, including AKS, Azure App Service, Azure Functions,