Senior Principal Engineer - Platform and SRE (Hybrid - Seattle)

Nordstrom Canada Retail Inc; Seattle (WA); Hybrid; USD 201,000 - 332,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/Vision

Dental

Retirement and Paid Time Away

Life Insurance and Disability

Merchandise Discount

EAP Resources

Job summary

Nordstrom in Seattle, WA, is seeking a Senior Principal Engineer to shape enterprise architecture and engineering practices. You will own cloud platform, CI/CD, and SRE strategy, guiding design decisions across teams and setting reliability standards.

The role blends strategic influence with hands-on engineering, focusing on scalable, robust, and cost-effective solutions while advocating a holistic One Nordstrom perspective.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of software or infrastructure engineering experience.
• Deep architectural experience with large-scale cloud platforms and Kubernetes in production.
• Expertise in continuous delivery, canary analysis, artifact signing, and deployment policies.
• Experience building SRE practices at scale with SLOs and error budgets.

Responsibilities

• Own the north star architecture for cloud platform, CI/CD, and SRE with a multi-year horizon.
• Set design principles and enforce standards across teams and platforms.
• Drive consensus across Platform, SRE, Security and product engineering teams.
• Lead incident-driven improvements and scale reliability across Nordstrom systems.

Skills

Cloud platforms

Kubernetes

SRE

Architectural experience

Cost optimization

Influence without authority

AI for operations

Education

Bachelor's/Master's in CS/Engineering

Tools

CI/CD

Kubernetes

Job description

Job Description: A Senior Principal Engineer at Nordstrom serves as a strategic technical consultant across the entire organization, influencing enterprise-wide architecture and engineering practices. This role influences design trade‑off decisions company‑wide, solves complex endemic problems, identifies industry trends for implementation, and ensures all engineering solutions are exemplary in terms of robustness, stability, scalability, and cost‑effectiveness. The Sr. Principal Engineer represents the highest level of technical individual contributor in their organization, who shapes Nordstrom's technology landscape while maintaining a holistic "One Nordstrom" perspective.

A day in the life...

Own the north star architecture for cloud platform, CI/CD, and SRE, and hold a view that runs two to three years out, deliberately past the current product cycle. Establish the design principles that let teams make sound calls without needing you in the room. Identify where the platform limits the business before it surfaces as an incident or a missed date. Own the problems that sit between teams and lack clear ownership and carry them to a solution. Attach reliability targets to what the business does rather than to the services that happen to carry it. A single system often supports capabilities with different availability needs, and it is rarely worth building everything to the highest tier a system touches. Make deliberate degradation, where the most critical capabilities keep running, the expectation in design reviews. Drive consensus on direction across Platform, SRE, Security, and the product and engineering teams that consume what we build. Make standards hold by enforcing them in the pipeline and in production validation gating, so everyone meets the same expectations. Resolve technical disagreement without being divisive. Guide design reviews inside and outside your own organization and set SRE up to do the same at scale, so delivered systems match the design that was agreed. When reality argues against a standard, change the standard. Identify the industry trends and emerging capabilities worth adopting, and decide which ones Nordstrom should move on now, wait on, or skip entirely. Separate documented production practice from vendor claims and conference aspiration. Act as a technical decision maker during significant incidents regardless of which systems are involved, and turn what those incidents teach into platform defaults, not one-team fixes.

You own this if you have:

• 15+ years of professional software or infrastructure engineering experience and a Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• Deep, hands‑on architectural experience with large‑scale cloud platforms, including containerized workloads on Kubernetes in production, multi‑account cloud estates, and shared services owned centrally but consumed by many teams.
• Demonstrated depth in continuous delivery at enterprise scale: progressive delivery and canary analysis, immutable artifact identity and promotion‑over‑rebuild discipline, configuration as versioned deployment, and rollback design that holds up when state is forward‑incompatible.
• Experience with software supply chain security beyond scanning, including build provenance, artifact signing or attestation, and policy enforcement at deploy time.
• A track record establishing SRE practice at scale: SLOs and error budgets that influence release decisions, observability standards, incident command, and an informed view of why measures of central tendency are weak signals for reliability.
• Architectural experience with resilience posture, covering blast‑radius isolation patterns such as cell‑based architecture, multi‑region active‑passive and active/active trade‑offs, data consistency under concurrent writes, and rehearsed failover.
• Experience engineering for large, predictable traffic peaks in retail, e‑commerce, marketplace, or a comparably seasonal environment, including capacity forecasting, load and scale testing, and chaos exercises against revenue‑critical journeys.
• Sound cost judgment, with a history of recommending reliability investment that leadership can defend financially, and the willingness to argue against expensive architecture that the organization cannot yet operate.
• A record of influence without authority: setting standards that teams adopt because they are useful, resolving cross‑team technical conflict in a way both sides can live with, and moving organizations you do not manage.
• Informed, skeptical perspective on AI for operations and delivery, including where agent‑based investigation and automated remediation currently work and where published results do not yet support autonomy.
• Judgment about organizational design in engineering, including the failure modes of centralized operations functions and how ownership boundaries shape whether reliability improves.
• Ability to write and speak clearly enough that a standard, a trade‑off, or a risk lands with engineers and with executives in the same room and the same document.

This role is offered as hybrid in Seattle, WA. Candidates must be available to work in office at the Nordstrom corporate headquarters a minimum of 4 days/week to be considered for this position.

Pay Range Details The pay range(s) below has been provided in compliance with state specific laws. Pay ranges may be different for other locations. Pay offers are dependent on the location, as well as job‑related knowledge, skills, and experience. $200,500.00 - $332,000.00 Annual

Benefits

We’ve got you covered… Our employees are our most important asset and that’s reflected in our benefits. Nordstrom is proud to offer a variety of benefits to support employees and their families, including:

• Medical/Vision
• Dental
• Retirement and Paid Time Away
• Life Insurance and Disability
• Merchandise Discount
• EAP Resources

Benefits include 401k, medical/vision/dental/life/disability insurance options, PTO accruals, Holidays, and more.

Eligibility requirements may apply based on location, job level, classification, and length of employment.

Learn more in the Nordstrom Benefits Overview by copying and pasting the following URL into your browser: https://careers.nordstrom.com/pdfs/Ben_Overview_20-21.pdf

For Los Angeles or San Francisco applicants: Nordstrom is required to inform you that we conduct background checks after conditional offer and consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with legal requirements per Los Angeles, Cal. Muni. Code 189.04 and the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance. For additional state and location specific notices, please refer to the Legal Notices document within the FAQ section of the Nordstrom Careers site. Applicants with disabilities who require assistance or accommodation should contact the nearest Nordstrom location, which can be identified at www.nordstrom.com. Please be mindful that there may be legal notices and requirements related to this job posting that are specific to your state. Review the Career Site FAQ’s for relevant information and guidelines.

About Us

We’re a fast-moving fashion company that started as a shoe store in 1901. This heritage of service is the foundation we’re building on as we provide convenience and true connection for our customers. We empower our people to be innovative, creative and focused on providing the best service to our customers. Through it all, we remain committed to leaving the world better than we found it. Whether you’re a genius engineer, a phenomenal salesperson or a supply chain pro, we invite you to bring your unique talents and join our team. We reward great work, promote from within and celebrate diversity.

CUSTOMER OBSESSED

We strive to know our customers better than anyone else. We listen, anticipate, build trust and move with speed to deliver on their needs.

OWNERS AT HEART

We treat every interaction as an opportunity to make an impact and deliver excellence.

CURIOUS AND EVER CHANGING

We approach problems with curiosity and create solutions. We unlock potential to be bold, think big and inspire innovation.

HERE TO WIN

We’re committed to delivering results, both today and tomorrow. We win as a team by supporting and challenging one another to be better every day.

WE EXTEND OURSELVES

We treat each other with respect and kindness. We do the small things that make a big difference. We create a welcoming environment, helping people feel connected, valued and part of one community. Come on! Join us!

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