Principal Software Engineer

The RealReal is the world's largest online marketplace for authenticated, consigned luxury goods.  We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to help us solve some of our toughest and most interesting challenges as we continue to scale.  Reporting directly to our VP of Engineering, this is a spanning role that will affect multiple areas of the business.

As a Principal Software Engineer, you'll spend about 40% of your time on architecture, mentoring, thought leadership, and guiding teams around the company as they establish or update best practices for software development.  You'll participate in guild (community of practice) meetings, architecture review sessions, organize training for engineers, and otherwise help ensure that we maintain a cohesive and modern technology vision while still empowering teams to move fast.  You'll partner with senior technical leadership to establish north stars of our technology vision.  You'll represent the company at conferences and other speaking engagements from time to time.

With the other 60% of your time, you'll dive in and actively develop that future!  You'll typically start the work on some of our most challenging projects, laying out the foundational architecture and actively contributing code.  In most cases, you'll bring in other engineers from around the company as these initiatives grow, eventually handing it off to Staff Engineers as you go to tackle the next challenge.

Some upcoming projects you'll be involved in:

• Upgrades to our inventory & catalog system as we transition from a single-SKU model to allow for depth and variants
• Assisting with the strategy as we continue to break apart our existing ruby on rails monolith into services
• Preparation and design for future international expansion
• Improvements to our payout processes
• And much more!

What You Get To Do Every Day

• Propose and build technical architecture and solutions to move our business forward
• Advise and collaborate with senior engineering leadership on technical vision and strategy across a multi-year timeframe
• Build a deep understanding of The RealReal's business model, opportunities, and challenges
• Provide technical direction and mentorship for engineers across the organization
• Drive build vs buy evaluations, including research and initial assessment with vendors
• Assist in coordinating cross-team engineering efforts and determining technical requirements
• Review technical architecture proposals and pull requests and provide constructive feedback
• Produce high-quality, performant, testable code, and systems
• Document architecture and processes, and uplevel them across the company
• Represent the company at conferences and other events, helping us to build brand awareness and attract talent

What You Bring To The Role

• 10+ years of professional web application/full-stack development experience
• 2+ years leading a high-performance engineering team or organization, in a fast-paced environment
• Fluency with any of Ruby, Elixir, Erlang, or another object-oriented or functional programming language
• Strong understanding of distributed systems and architecture
• Strong understanding of web technologies: HTML5, Javascript, CSS/SASS, REST, JSON
• Strong understanding of web-app performance fundamentals and related dev tools
• Strong database fundamentals and experience with MySql or PostgreSQL
• Experience using async message queues such as Kafka or Kinesis
• Mastery of git and Github workflows
• Experience with Microservices architecture
• Bachelor of Computer Science degree or equivalent experience
• Experience building E-commerce, Operations, and Logistics applications

Nice to Haves

• Experience with Headless E-commerce APIs
• Experience working with machine learning or related technologies
• Experience with iOS/Android and mobile development
• Experience with GraphQL
• Experience with Docker and Kubernetes

Want to learn more about our team at The RealReal? Check out our Technology & Product Blog!

The RealReal is the world's largest online marketplace for authenticated, resale luxury goods, with more than 20 million members. With a rigorous authentication process overseen by experts, The RealReal provides a safe and reliable platform for consumers to buy and sell their luxury items. We have hundreds of in-house gemologists, horologists and brand authenticators who inspect thousands of items each day. As a sustainable company, we give new life to pieces by thousands of brands across numerous categories-including women's and men's fashion, fine jewelry and watches, art and home-in support of the circular economy. We make selling effortless with free virtual appointments, in-home pickup, drop-off and direct shipping. We do all of the work for consignors, including authenticating, using AI and machine learning to determine optimal pricing, photographing and listing their items, as well as handling shipping and customer service. At our 13 retail locations, including our eight shoppable stores, customers can sell, meet with our experts and receive free valuations.

The RealReal is committed to providing an equal employment opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity or expression, or Veteran status. We will consider qualified applicants for a position regardless of arrest or conviction records, consistent with legal requirements.   GHR2460.

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