Principal Software Engineer

Position Overview

Follett Higher Education is a leading educational service provider and omnichannel retailer that provides students, faculty and staff, parents, and fans with the course materials, learning tools, and retail services needed to successfully support the collegiate journey. Follett Higher Education supports over 6 million students through its 1,100 physical and 1,750 eCommerce campus stores across North America.

The Principal Software Engineer is the senior-most individual contributor in engineering. This is a hands-on role: the Principal designs, builds, and ships production software for the most complex and highest-risk work, while setting technical direction and architecture across all engineering teams. The Principal raises the bar for engineering excellence through example - reference implementations, code and design reviews, and mentorship - and partners with engineering and product leadership to align technical strategy with business goals.

Responsibilities

Hands-on Delivery & Technical Execution:

• Design, build, and ship production code for the most complex, high-risk, or cross-team work on the product roadmap.
• Own technical outcomes across engineering, from design through production.
• Build reference implementations, prototypes, and proofs of concept that establish patterns adopted across engineering.
• Lead code and design reviews on high-impact changes, focusing on design and long-term maintainability.
• Lead response to critical production incidents through resolution and root-cause fix.

Architecture & Technical Direction:

• Define and evolve the engineering-wide target architecture and technical roadmap, balancing scalability, cost, and maintainability against delivery constraints.
• Set multi-year technical direction and sequence the initiatives to reach it; identify cross-team risks and dependencies early.
• Make and document build-vs-buy, platform, and technical-debt investment recommendations through written design proposals.

Modernization & Engineering Excellence:

• Personally drive cloud-native adoption on AWS, legacy system transformation, and platform standardization.
• Raise engineering standards across teams: CI/CD, observability, automated testing, and automation.

Technical Leadership, Mentorship, & Stakeholder Alignment:

• Mentor senior engineers and technical leads across engineering through pairing, code review, and design feedback; develop the next generation of technical leaders.
• Partner with Directors of Engineering on technical strategy, priorities, and sequencing.
• Advise the VP of Engineering, product, and business leadership on technical strategy, trade-offs, and risk in business terms.
• Serve as the senior technical escalation point across engineering, resolving technical disagreements between teams.