Principal Engineer, Commerce Engineering

Description
This role is categorized as hybrid. This means the successful candidate is expected to report to Mountain View, Austin, Atlanta, Detroit, Warren, Milford] three times per week, at minimum.
At General Motors, we are dedicated to driving innovation and excellence in the automotive industry. We are seeking a highly skilled Principle Engineer to oversee all General Motors Commerce software engineering teams developing on the following platforms; Salesforce, HCL Commerce, Shopify. This includes custom front end and microservices development.
As a Principal Engineer, your core responsibility will be mentoring and guiding junior engineers in delivering high-quality software with high velocity across our technology stacks. Our technical leaders work across multiple teams, acting as force multipliers who enhance our technical capabilities while fostering a culture of engineering excellence. We are looking for an experienced technical leader who is passionate about building and scaling distributed systems while mentoring other technical leads and engineers. This role involves deep technical expertise combined with strong leadership skills that can drive technical excellence across the commerce engineering organization.
This is a senior technical leadership position. You will be expected to provide technical direction across multiple engineering individuals/teams while partnering with engineering managers to ensure technical excellence in execution to our goals. Our technical leaders contribute through architectural decisions, code reviews, and mentoring other engineering leads. You'll be a technical mentor and strategic partner, helping other engineering leads grow while ensuring the overall technical health of our commerce ecosystem.
Skills:
Technical Expertise: Deep expertise and passion for Commerce technologies and microservices architectures.
Distributed Systems Knowledge: Comprehensive understanding of distributed systems patterns, event-driven architectures, and experience with Kafka in production environments.
Architecture and Design: Proven track record of designing and implementing large-scale distributed systems, with ability to make and justify complex architectural decisions.
Leadership Experience: Experience leading multiple technical teams, preferably as a technical lead or architect, with demonstrated ability to influence and guide technical decisions across organizations.
Communication and Influence: Exceptional communication skills with ability to articulate complex technical concepts to various audiences and influence technical direction across multiple teams.
Strategic Thinking: Strong analytical and strategic thinking capabilities, with ability to balance technical excellence with business needs and practical constraints.
Key Responsibilities:

• Mentor and guide junior engineers, providing support and best practices for delivering high-quality software efficiently.
• Drive best practices in software development, including coding standards, testing, and deployment processes.
• Implement and enforce software quality assurance practices, including automated testing, code reviews, and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) processes.
• Ensure software reliability through effective monitoring, incident management, and performance optimization.
• Stay current with industry trends and emerging technologies to leverage new features and capabilities in commerce software.
• Collaborate with IT and security teams to ensure compliance with GM's information security policies.

Qualifications:

• 10+ years of experience in software development, with at least 5 years in technical leadership roles, ideally with a focus on commerce platforms (Salesforce, HCL Commerce, Shopify, Zuora, Adyen).
• Strong technical proficiency in:
  • Salesforce development (Apex, Visualforce, Lightning)
  • HCL Commerce architecture and customization
  • Shopify development (Liquid, APIs, and app development)
  • Front-end development (HTML, CSS, React, JavaScript frameworks)
  • Microservices architecture and development (RESTful APIs, Docker, Kubernetes)
• Experience in software quality assurance practices, including automated testing frameworks (Selenium, Playwright) and CI/CD tools (Copado, GitHub Actions).
• Knowledge of software reliability engineering principles and practices, including monitoring, observability, incident response, and performance tuning.
• Experience with Agile methodologies and project management tools (JIRA).
• Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to work in a fast-paced environment.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams.
• Proven track record of mentoring and developing junior engineers into high-performing team members.

Additional Description

• The compensation information is a good faith estimate only. It is based on what a successful applicant might be paid in accordance with applicable state laws. The compensation may not be representative for positions located outside of New York, Colorado, California, or Washington.
  
  • The salary range for this role is $225,000 and $334,800. The actual base salary a successful candidate will be offered within this range will vary based on factors relevant to the position.

  
  An incentive pay program offers payouts based on company performance, job level, and individual performance.

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