Since H-E-B Digital Technology's inception, we've been investing heavily in our customers' digital experience, reinventing how they find inspiration from food, how they make food decisions, and how they ultimately get food into their homes. This is an exciting time to join H-E-B Digital-we're using the best available technologies to deliver modern, engaging, reliable, and scalable experiences to meet the needs of our growing audience.

The Principal Software Engineer acts as Principal / Consultant with recognized mastery (internal and external) within their function or discipline. Most of their time is spent implementing solutions that impact the critical future direction of the organization.

As a Principal Software Engineer, you'll lead, coach, and mentor engineers and teams, provide technical direction and priorities, identify ways to improve codebases, solutions to complex problems, and propose paths forward to drive outcomes. You'll make recommendations for overall application system design, architecture, security, scalability, reliability, and performance. Work is subject to executive level review at major milestones. May coach, direct the work, or review the work of others.

Once you're eligible, you'll become an Owner in the company, so we're looking for commitment, hard work, and focus on quality and Customer service. 'Partner-owned' means our most important resources--People--drive the innovation, growth, and success that make H-E-B The Greatest Omnichannel Retailing Company.

Do you have a:
HEART FOR PEOPLE... skills to serve as technical authority and coordinate work for a group of engineers?
HEAD FOR BUSINESS... expertise to make sound, mature technical judgments that result in significant impact?
PASSION FOR RESULTS... drive to deliver sweeping technical initiatives?

What is your background?
- Bachelors' degree or equivalent experience or comparable formal training, certification, or work experience
- 12+ years of experience in software development
- Expert in in multiple programming languages, technologies, and frameworks.
- Expert knowledge in system and data architecture, data modeling, and design and capable of architecting and designing at the application or service level using well-accepted design patterns.
- Ability to review platform designs for strength of engineering solutions, namely performance, sustainability, and iterative development potential.
- Experience with common software engineering tools (e.g., Git, Jira, Confluence)
- Extensive experience successfully producing consistent, high-quality results.
- Expert knowledge of Computer Science fundamentals: data structures, algorithms, design patterns, system architecture and design patterns
- Expert understanding of the full SDLC and frameworks (Agile, Scrum, Kanban, etc.).

- Expertise in MDM (master data management) and or PIM (Product Information Management)

- Able to communicate with technical and non-technical peers and stakeholders


What is the work?
- Leads the application of existing principles and guides development of new ideas
- Provides unprecedented or future solutions that affect several departments
- Requires direct communication with executive leadership on matters of strategic importance
- Develops and implements new products, processes, standards, or operations plans that will have significant impact on the achievement of functional results
- Creates formal networks with key decision makers and widely recognized as expert and thought leader by both internal and external community
- Exercises wide latitude in determining objectives and approaches to critical assignments
- 'Evangelizes' new ideas / technologies / solutions to gain acceptance from a wide range of audiences

Area of Focus

- Expertise in modernizing master (core) data domains and designing scalable, interoperable data architectures for complex legacy systems.

- Experience in the retail space, driving digital transformation and optimizing data quality management.

- Expected to modernize data domains and design scalable, interoperable data architectures for complex legacy systems focusing on the product (item) domain

- Research, inform, propose, and decide on build versus buy decisions

- Explore, research, and build protypes taking advantage of the latest AI capabilities

- Contributes regularly to high impact, boundary crossing efforts throughout H-E-B as needed
- Broad visibility into the wider organization and participates where needed without prompting
- Ability to move between organizations and projects effectively
- Participates in efforts, both strategic and technical, works collaboratively and cross-functionally to remove roadblocks
- Participates in executive leadership level discussions and initiatives, including VP and above

Architecture, Coding & Testing
- Ability to jump into any project, with any language or competency area and upskill quickly to begin assisting and driving value
- Writes high quality code that builds credibility and influence
- Ability to balance the realities of technology legacy and prior circumstances
- Engages objectively, puts aside personal preferences or biases to not limit participation; is able to work in any set of circumstances or stack successfully
- Balances efficiency and quality to achieve larger and needed outcomes in a timely manner
- Effectively balances time between code and people issues
- Reinforces good code review discipline and etiquette
- Drives a culture of simplicity over complexity wherever possible. Just as comfortable removing code as writing and maintaining it
- Builds a culture of best engineering practices through delivery. Sets an example for other engineers to follow in each engagement
- Grows the talents of other engineers by providing examples and showing their work
- Mentors other Sr. Staff, Staff and Senior engineers
- Possesses a wide breadth of experience and understanding on patterns, processes, and architecture. Inclusive of new, modern, and legacy
- Ability to learn quickly and direct teams to needed resources when unable to personally provide recommendations on a solution
- Monitors the technology horizon as is expected in Staff and lower roles
- Teaches other engineers and technology leaders how to learn and monitor the technology horizon
- Drives consistent, effective patterns and processes across multiple areas of H-E-B

Organizational Insight
- Participates where needed without prompting or request
- Can identify needs in completely unrelated areas through information gathering and keeping on the wider pulse of the broader organization
- Drives own workload in the most critically needed areas of H-E-B
- Organizational insights are inclusive of all (within reason) critical areas of H-E-B
- Can use personal understanding of relationships and personalities involved to determine what important topics aren't being talked about in meetings, and drive those conversations effectively to ensure success of efforts
- Factors in each team's capabilities and ability to deliver when delivering a larger solution. Where capability is lacking, provides support or guidance to choose an effective strategy
- Understands larger H-E-B business objectives, the largest company risks, and is able to use that information to ensure personal involvement and influence in those critical areas

Data Driven Approach
- Serves recommendations to larger organizations and efforts that are based on data and evidence, while factoring in personal experience
- Regularly gathers relevant data and insights to help determine areas of focus and priority (both team and personal)
- Teaches others to think and operate through data and evidence
- Uses metrics and data to help others be successful in their strategies

Effective Communication and Knowledge Sharing
- Leads through influence without direct authority
- Operates and communicates with executive presence and maturity in approach with a focus on influencing others. Excellent communication skills that are based in empathy and kindness, while not losing the directness required
- Ability to influence at a VP and above level across organizational boundaries.
- Ability to influence technology partners and teams across organizational boundaries
- Builds influence by building trust across H-E-B organization through vulnerability, authenticity, competence and delivery
- Confident in own recommendations that are backed by data, but encourages others to challenge
- Clearly communicates own limitations and able to redirect to other more helpful resources when needed. Uses this as an opportunity to lean on others to learn
- Uses failures as opportunities to influence and teach
- Does not keep best ideas to self, help others be successful and shine a spotlight on them, with benefit of growing own influence. Be known as someone who, when engaged, will ensure success of everyone involved
- Effective at influencing leaders to think beyond personal bias(technology, org structure, team processes, etc.) and to focus on business/effort success

Time Management
- Spends a good mix of time coding in critical areas across multiple projects, as well as providing guidance and informal leadership in different areas of the organization
- Ability to flex and shift time spent to only the most impactful areas. Able to reflect and rebalance time management based on personal and other factors
- Ability to participate (through own efforts, or through others) in multiple critical efforts that span multiple teams
- Can easily shift between the role that is needed from them at the time (leadership, influence, coding, architect, etc.)

Teamwork and Collaboration
- Works through others more than personally delivering
- Ensures team and effort success by looking at larger picture and providing coaching and recommendations
- Takes ownership and responsibility for challenges or failures that occur, then turns that into strategy or solutions to resolve the issue. Uses these opportunities as educational to grow team capabilities
- Brings humanity to each engagement, navigating difficult conversations and building alignment while still being effective

Dealing with Ambiguity
- Ability to look at a larger landscape or challenge and identify the areas that require further investigation or focus.
- Ability to look at organizational level efforts that span multiple teams, and not only identify the risks/gaps in the tech approach, but in the team and business approach.
- Can construct and present an approach or document that brings everyone to a shared understanding of an accurate view of current efforts, business needs, realities, processes & technology so that different teams or leaders can solution from the same starting point
- Ability to determine the urgency of an effort and factor that into the plans
- Ability to articulate the deeper and more nuanced landscape of our business and how it impacts the goals and outcomes that are being sought by a large technology initiative. -
- Ability to build maps / plans that will help navigate unexpected challenges, and help turn unknown unknowns into known knowns
- Ability to create a vision when needed that helps navigate large to extreme complexity efforts to success
- Effectively articulate and communicate the vision to both leadership and team members
- Builds a technology strategy that achieves the goals of a technology/business vision using established patterns
- Creates tech strategies are robust, reliable, observable and based on modern accepted best practices that reduce engineer toil and maintenance
- Ability to plan end to end efforts, including participating/building in rollout and release strategies that reduce risk and pain to our business
- Ability to factor in urgency into planning a strategy, but also able to defend and express where time must be invested to ensure long term success and maintainability of the systems that are being built

Do you have what it takes to be an H-E-B Principal Software Engineer?
Partner has broad and comprehensive expertise that generates and promotes new theories, concepts, principles, and methodologies within a specialty area.
- Problems that are required to solve are complex and multi-dimensional
- May be asked to speak at conferences or serve on industry-wide panels / boards
- Typically assigned to the most critical and strategic / complex / high risk undertakings
- Ability to influence at every level and across the enterprise
- Ability to apply extensive technical knowledge and translate it into an applicable business solution
- Ability to take ownership and responsibility for organizational best practices and processes and their continuous improvement.
- Empowers team to continuously improve process and development outcomes.
- Creates an environment of psychological safety.
- Effectively collaborates outside own organizational boundaries.
- Understand business strategies and priorities for stakeholders across the company.
- Leads production support, on-call, debugging, and troubleshooting of issues impacting multiple teams and services.

Can you...
- Travel by car or plane with overnight stays
- Work extended hours; sit for extended periods
- Work rotating and on-call schedules, as needed

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