Principal Software Engineer - Inventory Tech & AI

Nordstrom; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 191,000 - 297,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/Vision, Dental, Retirement and

Paid Time Away

Life Insurance and Disability

Merchandise Discount and EAP Resources

Job summary

Nordstrom, a leading fashion retailer, is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for the Inventory Technology team. You will oversee design and implementation of scalable systems that move, track and optimize inventory across stores, warehouses and RFID systems.

Play a key leadership role guiding 150+ engineers, shaping event-driven microservices, AI-enabled automation, and secure, enterprise-grade solutions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, or related field.
• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Strong proficiency in Java and Python.
• Experience with AWS and/or GCP.
• Hands-on experience with agentic AI systems; AWS Bedrock AgentCore is a strong plus.
• Experience with Agile methodologies and CI/CD.
• DevOps experience with improving recovery times and mitigating failures.
• Experience with CI/CD tools (GitLab) and containerization technologies.
• Ability to design scalable systems with simple, operable architectures.
• Experience building data science-enabled solutions with big data and traditional software skills.
• Experience leveraging AI, especially Generative AI, to improve automation and productivity.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction for a 150+ engineering organization and guide agentic development practices.
• Architect and develop complex, scalable systems to meet SLAs and KPIs.
• Design and evolve event-driven microservices powering real-time inventory visibility across stores, warehouses, and RFID systems.
• Collaborate with senior leaders to propose solutions and trade-offs.
• Lead engineers across multiple teams and mentor senior engineers.
• Diagnose and remedy performance or security issues.
• Apply industry standards for secure development practices.
• Contribute to telemetry solutions and industry open source projects.
• Hands-on contribution with POCs and deep problem investigation.

Skills

Java

Python

Agentic AI systems

AWS/GCP

Agile methodologies

DevOps

CI/CD

Containerization

Event-driven architectures

Scalable systems

Data science integration

Generative AI for automation

Security best practices

Mentoring engineers

Inventory domain knowledge

RFID/WMS knowledge

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science/Engineering

Tools

GitLab

Kafka

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Nordstrom, a leading fashion retailer, is seeking a Principal Software Engineer for the Inventory Technology team. You will oversee design and implementation of scalable systems that move, track and optimize inventory across stores, warehouses and RFID systems.

Play a key leadership role guiding 150+ engineers, shaping event-driven microservices, AI-enabled automation, and secure, enterprise-grade solutions.