Senior Principal Backend Architect - GraphQL & eCommerce

Shutterfly, Inc.; Durham (NC); Remote; USD 150,000 - 206,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus incentive

Health benefits

401K program

Other employee perks

Job summary

Spoonflower, part of the Shutterfly family, seeks a Senior Principal Software Engineer to lead backend systems and API design powering our commerce experiences. You will own GraphQL services, federated architectures, and Shopify integrations, partnering across teams to deliver scalable solutions and reliable systems.

You will drive architectural decisions, mentor engineers, and influence the roadmap while ensuring performance and uptime in a remote-friendly environment.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of backend or platform engineering experience.
• Strong track record building distributed systems and APIs at scale.
• Deep proficiency with GraphQL design, including federation architectures.
• Experience with Shopify or similar ecommerce platforms.
• Strong experience with Node.js and TypeScript.
• Proven ownership of systems in production (performance, uptime, reliability).
• Ability to work independently and drive high-impact work to completion.
• Excellent communication of tradeoffs and system design decisions.

Responsibilities

• Own design and evolution of core backend services and APIs supporting commerce workflows.
• Lead architecture and implementation of GraphQL services on Apollo Federation supergraph.
• Build and improve Shopify integrations as part of cross-team effort.
• Reconcile Shopify inventory/SKU with made-to-order fulfillment flow and order lifecycle.
• Define and improve service boundaries, data models, and integration points.
• Partner with frontend, product, and platform teams to simplify development and integration.
• Diagnose and resolve deep distributed-systems and runtime-level failures.
• Own production systems, including observability and incident response.
• Act as a technical reference in design reviews, mentoring, and coding standards.
• Influence roadmap decisions with clear tradeoffs grounded in business impact.

Skills

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

GraphQL design

Apollo Federation

Shopify integrations

Node.js/TypeScript

Production incident management

Technical leadership

Job description

Spoonflower, part of the Shutterfly family, seeks a Senior Principal Software Engineer to lead backend systems and API design powering our commerce experiences. You will own GraphQL services, federated architectures, and Shopify integrations, partnering across teams to deliver scalable solutions and reliable systems.

You will drive architectural decisions, mentor engineers, and influence the roadmap while ensuring performance and uptime in a remote-friendly environment.