Principal Software Engineer

ABOUT QUINCE

Founded in 2018, Quince was built to challenge the idea that nice things have to cost a lot. Our mission is simple: to make really high quality essentials for really low prices, produced fairly and sustainably. We believe everyone deserves exceptional craftsmanship and timeless design without the traditional markups. Quince is a direct-to-consumer (DTC) model that cuts out middlemen and leverages just-in-time manufacturing to minimize waste and maximize value.

Quince is a tech company disrupting the retail industry by putting AI, analytics and automation at the center of everything we do. Our unwavering commitment to excellence and company values guide our teams and actions:

• Customer First: We prioritize customer satisfaction in every decision.
• High Quality: True quality means premium materials and rigorous production standards you can feel good about.
• Essential Design: We focus on timeless, functional essentials instead of chasing trends.
• Always a Better Deal: Innovation and transparency ensure value for both customers and partners.
• Social & Environmental Responsibility: We commit to sustainable materials, ethical production, and fair wages.

Quince partners with world-class manufacturers across the globe and serves millions of customers. With strong investor backing and a focus on sustainable growth, we are a company that is rapidly scaling while maintaining a commitment to quality, simplicity, and radical price transparency.

OUR TEAM AND SUCCESS

At Quince, you will be part of a high-performing team that is redefining what quality, value, and sustainability mean in modern retail. We are a destination for builders, innovators, and operators to come together and challenge the status quo. Our collective ambition is bold. We are creating an entirely new category and customer experience – one that democratizes luxury and provides high quality products at radically low prices. That mission demands a world-class team committed to excellence.

If you are motivated by impact, growth, and purpose, you will find a strong sense of belonging at Quince.

The Role

Principal Engineer

We're looking for a Principal Engineer to help define the technical vision, architecture, and engineering strategy for some of Quince's most critical systems.

In this role, you will work across multiple engineering teams and business domains to solve complex technical and operational challenges. You will drive the architecture of highly scalable, reliable, and data-intensive platforms that power critical parts of the Quince customer and business experience.

This is a high-impact, hands-on technical leadership role. You will operate across organizational boundaries, influence senior technical and business leaders, and help shape the long-term evolution of Quince's technology platform.

Success in this role means building systems that are scalable, resilient, observable, and easy to evolve while raising the overall engineering bar across the organization.

Responsibilities

Technical Strategy & Architecture

• Define and drive the long-term technical vision and architecture for critical engineering domains.
• Design and evolve highly scalable, reliable, and distributed systems supporting Quince's rapidly growing business.
• Lead architecture decisions across multiple teams, balancing scalability, reliability, performance, simplicity, and speed of execution.
• Identify opportunities to simplify systems, eliminate technical complexity, and build reusable platform capabilities.
• Establish architectural patterns and engineering standards that enable teams to move quickly without compromising quality.

Distributed Systems & Platform Engineering

• Design and build distributed, event-driven, and highly available systems operating at significant scale.
• Develop platform capabilities that enable multiple engineering teams to build and operate products efficiently.
• Establish strong patterns for APIs, data management, service communication, asynchronous processing, and system integrations.
• Drive improvements in system reliability, observability, performance, and operational excellence.
• Design systems with strong data integrity, fault tolerance, and graceful failure characteristics.

Cross-Functional Technical Leadership

• Partner closely with product, engineering, data, operations, and business leaders to translate complex problems into scalable technical solutions.
• Lead technical initiatives that span multiple teams and organizational boundaries.
• Influence engineering roadmaps and investment decisions through strong technical judgment and business understanding.
• Drive alignment on ambiguous and high-impact technical problems.
• Represent engineering architecture and technical strategy in senior leadership discussions.

AI-Native Engineering & Innovation

• Drive adoption of AI-native engineering practices across teams.
• Identify opportunities to leverage AI, automation, and intelligent systems to improve engineering productivity and business outcomes.
• Partner with data science and engineering teams to integrate AI capabilities into production systems responsibly.
• Establish technical approaches that balance AI innovation with reliability, security, observability, and correctness.
• Help shape how Quince evolves its engineering practices as AI changes software development and system design.

Engineering Excellence & Organizational Impact

• Mentor and influence senior and staff-level engineers across the organization.
• Raise the bar for system design, technical decision-making, engineering quality, and operational excellence.
• Lead architecture reviews and provide guidance on critical technical decisions.
• Contribute to engineering hiring, talent development, and technical calibration.
• Build a culture of strong ownership, pragmatic engineering, and continuous improvement.

Qualifications

• 12+ years of software engineering experience building and scaling production systems.
• Proven track record of designing and operating large-scale distributed systems.
• Deep expertise in system architecture, distributed systems, event-driven architectures, and platform engineering.
• Experience solving complex technical problems involving scale, reliability, data integrity, performance, and operational complexity.
• Demonstrated ability to define technical strategy and architecture across multiple teams and business domains.
• Experience building reusable platforms, frameworks, or infrastructure that enable other engineering teams.
• Strong understanding of API design, data architecture, service-oriented systems, and cloud-native technologies.
• Experience leading large, ambiguous, cross-functional technical initiatives from problem definition through execution.
• Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence both technical and business leaders.
• Demonstrated ability to mentor senior engineers and drive engineering excellence across organizations.
• Strong product and business judgment, with the ability to connect technical decisions to customer and business outcomes.
• Experience leveraging AI-enabled development workflows and/or integrating AI capabilities into production systems is highly valued.

WHY QUINCE

Joining Quince means being part of a mission-driven team reshaping retail. You will work alongside talented colleagues, tackle meaningful challenges, and contribute to building a more sustainable, accessible future for customers and partners alike.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY & HIRING INTEGRITY

Quince provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applications for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran or military status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws.

Quince is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation to complete your application or to perform the essential functions of a role at Quince, please let us know by completing this accommodation form. We review all requests individually and will work with you to determine appropriate accommodations on a case-by-case basis.

Employment is contingent upon successful completion of a background check. Quince will conduct background checks in compliance with applicable federal, state, and local laws.

Security Advisory: Beware of Frauds

At Quince, we're dedicated to recruiting top talent who share our drive for innovation. To safeguard candidates, Quince emphasizes legitimate recruitment practices. Initial communication is primarily via official Quince email addresses and LinkedIn; beware of deviations. Personal data and sensitive information will not be solicited during the application phase. Interviews are conducted via phone, in person, or through the approved platforms Google Meets or Zoom—never via messaging apps or other calling services. Offers are merit-based, communicated verbally, and followed up in writing. If personal information is requested to initiate the hiring process, rest assured it will be through secure and protected means.