Principal Engineer, Commerce Engineering

Description
Work Arrangement:
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.
About the role:
At General Motors, we are dedicated to driving innovation and excellence in the automotive industry. We are seeking a highly skilled Principal Engineer to oversee all General Motors Commerce software engineering teams working on platforms such as Salesforce , HCL Commerce , and Shopify . This includes custom front-end development and microservices.
As a Principal Engineer, your core responsibility will be to mentor and guide engineers in delivering high-quality software with speed and efficiency across our technology stack. Our technical leaders operate across multiple teams, acting as force multipliers who enhance our 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, and who thrives on mentoring other engineers and technical leads.
This is a senior technical leadership role. You will be expected to provide technical direction across multiple individuals and teams, partnering with engineering managers to ensure technical excellence and alignment with organizational goals. Technical leaders at GM contribute through architectural guidance, code reviews, and by mentoring engineering talent. In this role, you'll be both a strategic partner and a technical mentor, supporting the growth of our engineering leaders while ensuring the overall technical health of our commerce ecosystem
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.
What you'll do:

• 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.

Additional Description
Your Skills & Abilities (Required 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 Information:
Compensation: 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 the California Bay Area.

• The salary range for this role is $225,000 to $334,800. The actual base salary a successful candidate will be offered within this range will vary based on factors relevant to the position.
• Bonus Potential: An incentive pay program offers payouts based on company performance, job level, and individual performance.

Benefits: GM offers a variety of health and wellbeing benefit programs. Benefit options include medical, dental, vision, Health Savings Account, Flexible Spending Accounts, retirement savings plan, sickness and accident benefits, life insurance, paid vacation & holidays, tuition assistance programs, employee assistance program, GM vehicle discounts and more.
Company Vehicle: Upon successful completion of a motor vehicle report review, you will be eligible to participate in a company vehicle evaluation program, through which you will be assigned a General Motors vehicle to drive and evaluate. Note: program participants are required to purchase/lease a qualifying GM vehicle every four years unless one of a limited number of exceptions applies.
This job may be eligible for relocation benefits.
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