What are the responsibilities and job description for the Principal Application Developer position at VSE Corporation and Careers?
SUMMARY: The Principal Application Developer is accountable for the design, coding/build, and scale-out of a modern e-commerce platform backend. In this role you will be responsible for the software architecture and development of a custom, robust eCommerce platform able to support a wide array of product catalogs, checkout workflows, and integrations with third-party applications and services to ensure seamless commerce. You will play a key role in ensuring the platform is secure, scalable and reliable to handle high transaction volumes and future growth.
DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES:
Responsibilities include, but are not limited to:
- Design, build, and maintain the core back-end software architecture for a scalable e-commerce platform.
- Develop APIs, microservices, and integrations to power front-end applications and third-party services.
- Implement secure payment systems, inventory management, and order fulfillment logic.
- Optimize database schemas and queries for high availability and large-scale traffic.
- Ensure platform compliance with security and privacy standards.
- Collaborate with front-end developers, DevOps, and product managers to deliver a seamless platform experience.
- Build automation, CI/CD pipelines, and monitoring tools for system reliability.
- Proactively identify performance bottlenecks and design scalable solutions.
MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS:
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, software engineering or equivalent experience
- OR an additional 3 years of specific work experience in lieu of degree
- 7 years of relevant/technical work experience
- Strong proficiency in server-side languages
- Experience with frameworks
- Proficiency in relational and non-relational databases
- Experience with JSON, XML, and structured data formats
- Experience building and consuming RESTful and/or GraphQL APIs
- Knowledge of microservices architecture, event-driven systems, and containerization
- Familiarity with cloud platforms
- Hands-on experience with eCommerce including inventory management, payment gateways, shopping cart logic, and shipping APIs
- Experience with integrations involving ERP backend systems
- Understanding of catalog management, inventory, promotions, and multi-vendor systems
- Will be required to travel 25%
PREFERRED REQUIREMENTS:
- Experience designing distributed systems for high-traffic e-commerce
- Knowledge of caching, message queues, and search optimization
- Exposure to headless commerce platforms and API-first architectures
- Previous experience with large-scale e-commerce builds or SaaS platforms