Principal Engineer Platform

• *Principal Software Engineer – Platform Engineering**

As a **Principal Software Engineer** on the Platform Engineering team, you will provide shared **technical leadership across integration platforms, services, and teams** that enable enterprise\-scale business capabilities. You are a hands\-on engineer who designs, builds, and evolves **cloud\-first, enterprise\-grade integration solutions** while influencing standards, patterns, and long\-term technical direction across Columbia Sportswear.

You operate with a **wide sphere of influence** , partnering closely with architects, product leaders, and engineers to solve complex cross\-domain problems and raise the overall engineering bar for the organization.

• *HOW YOU’LL MAKE A DIFFERENCE**

• Lead the technical design and architecture of enterprise integration services, APIs, and event\-driven solutions using cloud PaaS platforms (primarily Microsoft Azure)
• Own and evolve integration standards and patterns, ensuring solutions are secure, scalable, maintainable, and observable
• Translate complex business processes into reliable software solutions that support multiple domains across the enterprise
• Operate as a senior technical leader within agile teams, guiding implementation while remaining hands\-on with critical code paths
• Mentor and coach engineers across levels, strengthening engineering fundamentals, design thinking, and delivery practices
• Drive adoption of modern DevOps, CI/CD, and automated testing practices across integration services
• Proactively identify technical risks, system gaps, and architectural debt, and lead initiatives to remediate them
• Partner with product owners, business stakeholders, and enterprise architects to communicate updates, inform roadmap decisions and priority, and meet business needs.

• *YOU ARE**

• A technical authority who leads through influence, not position
• Comfortable operating in ambiguous, cross\-team problem spaces
• A strong communicator who can articulate technical tradeoffs to both engineering and non\-technical stakeholders
• Skilled and concise with asynchronous communication practices in a global team setting
• Curious, pragmatic, and continuously learning—balancing innovation with operational stability
• Passionate about delivering high\-quality software and improving engineering culture at scale
• A proactive communicator who keeps your communication channel open between business stakeholders, your teammates, and enterprise architects.

• *YOU HAVE**

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Systems, or equivalent practical experience
• 8\+ years of professional software engineering experience, including leading or owning complex systems
• Deep experience building and operating enterprise integration services, including RESTful APIs and event\-driven architecture
• Proven expertise with one or more cloud platforms (Azure strongly preferred; AWS or GCP acceptable)
• Strong proficiency in modern OOP languages (C\#, Java, Node.js) and solid knowledge of design patterns and data structures
• Good to have Azure Architect certification
• Demonstrated experience designing for scale, resilience, and security in distributed systems
• Advanced experience with test automation, CI/CD pipelines, and production support
• Experience working within Agile at scale (portfolio\-level or multi\-team environments)

• This job description is not meant to be an all\-inclusive list of duties and responsibilities, but constitutes a general definition of the position's scope and function in the company.*