Principal Software Engineer - Java Backend [T500-29837]

About Ferguson:

Since 1953, Ferguson has been a source of quality supplies for a variety of industries. Together We Build Better infrastructure, better homes and better businesses. We exist to make our customers’ complex projects simple, successful, and sustainable. We proactively solve problems, adapt and grow to continuously serve our customers, communities and each other. Ferguson is proud to provide best-in-class products, service and capabilities across the following industries: Commercial/Mechanical, Facilities Supply, Fire and Fabrication, HVAC, Industrial, Residential Trade, Residential Building and Remodel, Waterworks and Residential Digital Commerce. Ferguson has approximately 36,000 associates across 1,700 locations. Ferguson is a community of proud associates who operate with the shared purpose of building something meaningful. You will build a career that you are proud of, at a company you can believe in.

Position Summary:

As a Principal Engineer at Ferguson, you will drive the design and delivery of our eCommerce platform, leading the development of scalable, reliable, and resilient customer-facing applications and shared platform services. You will work across teams to solve complex engineering challenges, influence technical direction, and align technology solutions with business objectives. Through hands-on technical leadership, you will help drive engineering excellence while enabling platform scalability, operational efficiency, and business growth.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the design and development of scalable, cloud-native applications and platform services.
• Influence technical standards, architecture decisions, and engineering best practices in partnership with Architects and engineering leaders.
• Drive the development of high-volume distributed systems, microservices, and APIs.
• Remain hands-on with coding, design reviews, troubleshooting, performance optimization, and critical technical initiatives.
• Lead the implementation of complex technical solutions spanning multiple teams and systems.
• Partner with Engineering, Product, and Business stakeholders to align technical solutions with business objectives and deliver measurable outcomes.
• Mentor engineers and drive engineering excellence across teams.
• Champion performance, resiliency, security, observability, and operational excellence.
• Drive adoption of CI/CD, DevOps, and modern software delivery practices.

Required Qualifications:

• 10+ years of software engineering experience with demonstrated technical leadership.
• Strong hands-on software development experience building, debugging, and optimizing large-scale distributed systems with high traffic and transaction volumes.
• Hands-on expertise in Java, Spring Boot, microservices, REST APIs, and distributed system architectures.
• Strong understanding of database design, data modeling, scalability, and performance optimization.
• Experience with distributed caching technologies such as Redis.
• Experience with event-driven architectures and messaging platforms.
• Experience with containerization, orchestration technologies (Kubernetes or similar), CI/CD pipelines, and modern software delivery practices across cloud and/or on-premises environments.
• Experience driving engineering execution and delivering complex technical initiatives across multiple teams.
• Proven experience collaborating with Engineering partner teams, Product, and Business stakeholders.
• Experience working in a global delivery model across multiple geographies and time zones.
• Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and influencing skills.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience building digital commerce platforms within retail, distribution, wholesale, or marketplace environments.
• Experience designing scalable multi-tenant architecture and shared platform services that support multiple businesses, brands, or channels.
• Experience with React.js, Node.js, and modern JavaScript/TypeScript technologies.

Key Technologies:

Java, Spring Boot, Microservices, REST APIs, Databases, Distributed Caching (Redis or similar), Event Streaming & Messaging, Containerization & Orchestration Technologies (Kubernetes or similar), CI/CD, Cloud and/or On-Premises Platforms, React.js, Node.js.