Senior Principal Backend Architect: GraphQL & Shopify

Shutterfly, Inc.; Fort Mill (SC); Remote; USD 159,000 - 206,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Bonus potential

Health benefits

401(k) program

Employee perks

Job summary

Spoonflower, part of the Shutterfly family, is seeking a Senior Principal Software Engineer to design and evolve core backend systems powering our commerce platform. You will own distributed services, GraphQL federation, and Shopify integrations, partnering with frontend, product, and platform teams.

We value deep technical ownership, scalable architectures, and clear tradeoffs. This remote-friendly role requires US residency in states where Shutterfly operates; base pay and benefits are

Qualifications

• 8+ years of backend or platform engineering experience.

Responsibilities

• Own the design and evolution of core backend services and APIs powering commerce workflows.
• Lead architecture and implementation of GraphQL services on our Apollo Federation supergraph.
• Build and improve Shopify integrations (Storefront API, Admin API, webhooks, order lifecycle).
• Reconcile Shopify inventory-SKU model with made-to-order fulfillment flow and complex order lifecycle.
• Define and improve service boundaries, data models, and integration points across systems.
• Partner with frontend, product, and platform teams to simplify how teams build and integrate.
• Diagnose and resolve deep distributed-systems and runtime-level failures, including federation transport behavior and performance under load.
• Own production systems, including operability, observability, and incident response.
• Act as a technical reference point through design reviews, mentoring, and setting engineering standards.
• Influence roadmap decisions by providing clear tradeoffs grounded in business and system impact.

Skills

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

GraphQL design

Shopify integrations

Node.js/TypeScript

Production ownership

Stakeholder communication

Tools

Apollo Federation

GraphQL

Shopify

Node.js

TypeScript

Kubernetes

Terraform

OpenSearch

AWS

Job description

Spoonflower, part of the Shutterfly family, is seeking a Senior Principal Software Engineer to design and evolve core backend systems powering our commerce platform. You will own distributed services, GraphQL federation, and Shopify integrations, partnering with frontend, product, and platform teams.

We value deep technical ownership, scalable architectures, and clear tradeoffs. This remote-friendly role requires US residency in states where Shutterfly operates; base pay and benefits are