Principal Software Engineer - Fulfillment Technology

Chewy; Bellevue (WA); On-site; USD 191,000 - 300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical / Rx insurance

Parental leave

Pet adoption reimbursement

Employee discounts (10% pet insurance,

Job summary

Chewy is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to lead the modernization of the warehouse management system within Fulfillment Technology & Science. You will set the architectural direction, design scalable cloud-enabled solutions, and deliver production-ready code that integrates with robotics and decisioning systems.

You will mentor teams, champion modern engineering practices, and advance AI-assisted development to improve design quality, testing, and maintainability.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field; Master’s preferred.
• 12+ years of software engineering in large-scale, business-critical systems.
• Experience applying AI-assisted development tools to accelerate initiatives.
• Hands-on programming in modern languages, notably Java/Kotlin, with production code.

Responsibilities

• Own modernization of Chewy's core fulfillment technology and design target architecture.
• Architect highly available, low-latency cloud/edge systems; ensure warehouse operations.
• Build rich mobile experiences for warehouse associates prioritizing usability and resilience.
• Define patterns for auditable data flows, state management, and observability.

Skills

Java/Kotlin production code

AWS cloud/edge

Kafka/streaming

Distributed systems design

React/TypeScript

Mobile/Android/Kotlin

AI-assisted development

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/Engineering

Master’s degree preferred

Tools

Kafka

React

Node.js

Android/Kotlin

Job description

At Chewy, taking care of pets and the people who love them through the highs, the lows, and the everyday is what drives us. Grounded in that purpose and focused on our mission to be the most trusted and convenient destination for pet parents and partners everywhere, we work every day to help people feel more confident, supported, and capable in caring for the animals they love—showing up with the products, services, care, and guidance they need, whenever they need it.

Bringing that to life takes exceptional leaders.

Leadership at Chewy is guided by our Operating Principles, which define how we lead, make decisions, develop talent, serve our customers and grow our business. We value leaders who think strategically, stay close to the customer, and aren't afraid to roll up their sleeves alongside their teams. They solve complex challenges, build high‑performing organizations, and partner closely with senior leaders to shape the future of Chewy.

If you're energized by building, leading, and making a meaningful impact, this leadership opportunity may be the right fit for you.

Principal Software Engineer, C08 (IC)

Our Opportunity

Chewy is looking for a Principal Software Engineer to join our Fulfillment Technology & Science team. Our fulfillment systems power critical, high‑volume operations across Chewy's warehouse network. You will set and execute the technical direction for the next evolution of our warehouse management system (WMS). You will design the architecture and bring it to life through production‑quality code, reusable patterns, and technical foundations that engineering teams can rapidly build upon. You will advance the platform using modern cloud‑first technologies while enabling more advanced analytics, optimization, machine learning, and AI‑assisted decision‑making.

You will be both a technology visionary and a hands‑on technical force multiplier. You will define a practical modernization strategy around existing custom and packaged solutions, remain directly engaged in implementation, and establish the architecture and standards needed to evolve the platform safely. You will create a flexible integration architecture that connects the WMS with intelligent decisioning systems, robotics, warehouse control systems, and other packaged platforms without compromising the reliability or continuity of warehouse operations. You will also design and build rich, intuitive mobile experiences for warehouse associates, ensuring workflows are fast, accessible, resilient, and effective in demanding operational environments.

You will actively embrace and champion AI coding tools and AI‑enabled software development frameworks to improve design quality, implementation speed, testing, documentation, and maintainability.

This is a rare opportunity to shape a critical fulfillment platform, establish modern engineering practices, and build the technology foundation that will power the next generation of Chewy fulfillment.

What You'll Do

• Own and execute the incremental modernization of Chewy's core fulfillment technology. Design the target architecture and prove it through production code, reference implementations, and reusable engineering patterns.
• Architect highly available, low‑latency systems across cloud and edge environments, partnering with infrastructure and networking teams to maintain warehouse operations through failures and disruptions.
• Design and build rich mobile experiences for warehouse associates with a focus on usability, performance, accessibility, offline resilience, device manageability, and rapid task execution.
• Establish a robust workflow framework for fulfillment operations that can adapt to evolving business needs, including explicit state management, validation, exception handling, retries, recovery, observability, and consistent execution across channels and sites.
• Design extensible integration patterns across custom and packaged solutions, machine learning and optimization models, robotics, and warehouse control systems, with clear ownership, guardrails, fallback behaviors, and auditable data flows.
• Define patterns that capture the history of operational events, decisions, workflow transitions, and system changes so critical processes can be traced, explained, reconciled, and improved.
• Provide bold, decisive technical leadership across teams. Resolve ambiguity, challenge assumptions, lead critical design and code reviews, and mentor engineers to raise the technical bar.

What You'll Need

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field. Master’s degree preferred.
• 12+ years of software engineering experience designing and incrementally modernizing large‑scale, business‑critical systems.
• Demonstrated experience applying AI‑assisted software development tools and workflows to accelerate the delivery of significant engineering initiatives.
• Expert hands‑on programming ability in modern languages, with Java/Kotlin preferred and recent experience writing production code.
• Deep AWS expertise across cloud and edge architecture, compute, networking, security, observability, infrastructure automation, and production operations.
• Deep expertise designing and building high‑throughput, low‑latency, event‑driven distributed systems using Kafka or comparable streaming technologies, including concurrency, idempotency, asynchronous processing, retry and replay patterns, and tradeoffs among availability, latency, correctness, and throughput.
• Deep understanding of distributed data storage technologies, including relational and NoSQL databases, key‑value stores, caching layers, and object storage. Experience selecting and designing resilient solutions for high‑volume transactional and event workloads using partitioning, replication, durability, and recovery patterns.
• Experience architecting modern web and mobile applications, including applications that operate reliably in demanding environments. Familiarity with technologies such as React, TypeScript, Node.js, and Android/Kotlin is preferred.
• Experience designing workflow‑driven or stateful operational systems that are flexible, resilient, and observable.
• Experience integrating custom software, packaged platforms, data products, and decisioning models through well‑defined APIs, events, and data contracts.
• Experience designing auditable systems, including access controls, change traceability, event history, reconciliation, and retention.
• Demonstrated ability to set technical direction, influence across teams, mentor engineers, and champion modern engineering practices, including AI‑assisted and specification‑driven development.

Bonus Qualifications

• Experience with fulfillment, warehousing, supply chain, or other high‑throughput physical operations.
• Experience with warehouse management systems, warehouse control systems, robotics, material handling automation, industrial controls, or related vendor integrations.
• Experience building applications for mobile or industrial devices and managing software across a distributed device fleet.

The base salary range for this role is $190,500 - $300,000.00.

• The specific salary offered to a candidate may be influenced by a variety of factors including but not limited to the candidate’s relevant experience, education, and work location. In addition, this position is eligible for 401k and a new hire and annual equity grant. C08+ positions may also be eligible for annual bonus.

We offer different types of insurance and benefits, such as medical/Rx, vision, dental, life, disability, hospital indemnity, critical illness, and accident. We offer parental leave, family services benefits, backup dependent care, flexible spending accounts, telemedicine, pet adoption reimbursement, employee assistance program, and many discounts including 10% off pet insurance and 20% off at Chewy.com.

Exempt salary team members have unlimited PTO, subject to manager approval. Team members will receive six paid holidays per year. Team members may be eligible for paid sick and family leave in compliance with applicable state and local regulations.

Chewy is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, gender, citizenship, marital status, religion, age, disability, gender identity, results of genetic testing, veteran status, as well as any other legally‑protected characteristic. If you have a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act or similar law, and you need an accommodation during the application process or to perform these job requirements, or if you need a religious accommodation, please contact [e-mail].

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