Principal Engineer API Design (m/f/x)

commercetools - we are:

• The competitive sort: We didn’t become the fastest growing, highest ever valued SaaS software company in digital commerce with nearly 100% year-over-year growth by sitting on the sidelines.
• Inspired: Continually exploring what’s possible — the innovators of headless commerce, the visionaries behind MACH — our patented tech has radically disrupted the world of enterprise ecommerce software - and we are just getting started. 
• Valued: Smart, strong, passionate individuals hailing from over 50 countries across the globe, speaking over 43 languages, and collectively embracing diversity, encouraging inclusion, and fostering a culture of caring.
• Driven: We push the limits, technology, and ourselves to retain the trust of some of the world’s leading and fastest growing brands every single day.

The Opportunity:

We recently crossed the threshold of 100 engineers, and are setting up a tech leadership track to enable us to grow further. By being one of the first Principal Engineers, you’ll shape the role itself and the tech leadership culture together with the Director of Tech Leadership, who you’ll report to.

commercetools invented the term MACH - Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless. Our API-first approach, along with our industry-leading API Design that enables a SaaS commerce solution to be as extensible as a self-hosted one, is core to our value proposition. As the Principal Engineer for API Design, you will not only ensure a consistent API Design, but also help us further innovate and improve our developer experience.

Your Mission:

• Own the API Design guidelines for commercetools services
• Define a common subset of meta features (e.g. Authentication)
• Enable (new) teams to build APIs that are consistent with our existing services
• Help design new API features that impact the developer experience, including user research
• Identify learning needs/skills gaps, and facilitate related technology knowledge sharing with the help of our internal knowledgement team
• Lead communication within the organization on long running initiatives to improve or unify the API Design, and ensure they get adopted successfully
• Closely collaborate with the Head Of Product and Staff Engineers of the Experience & Extensibility group
• Evolve and promote our tech vision internally

What you need to succeed:

• A technical background with a proven track record as an individual contributor (5+ years)
• 2+ years of experience in a technical leadership or architect role
• Experience working on API Design, ideally for multi-tenant SaaS products
• Experience with UX Research and Design techniques, and applying them to APIs
• Project management, especially for projects affecting multiple teams
• Experience setting up and running trainings and onboardings
• Fluent English verbal and written communication to work in an international environment
• Ability to live up to commercetools’ defined leadership values 
• Great self-assessment mastery
• Experience working within an Agile environment with focus on the customer view
• Mentality to share and the aspiration to constantly improve yourself and learn about leadership, new technologies and concepts

Nice to have:

• General experience with our tech stack: HTTP, Rest APIs, GraphQL, OAuth, RAML, Postman
• General experience within the e-commerce space

Team Values:

Positivity. Negativity is the enemy of progress.

Trust & Transparency. Promote direct and continuous feedback.

Learning. Be proud if you’ve failed at something. Think big, start small, learn fast!

 

Tech at commercetools:

We Are Open Source And Innovative By Design

🚀 We make rapid progress by being early adopters of React, Scala, and GraphQL

📋 We share & contribute to the open source community: https://github.com/sangria-graphql

⚙️ We <3 Automation and Machine Learning

 

We care about your Growth and Well-being

💰 Competitive compensation package: Generous compensation structure consisting of salary, competitive stock option package, various benefits  and perks

☀️ Remote Work: Up to 60 days/year from a country different from your base country  

💻 Open Learning & Development Budget

📚 ct Academy: Regular internal training sessions

⌚️ Flexibility: Morning person or night owl? We believe in outcome and motivated employees

🚀 Mindset & Growth: A diverse, creative workspace with an international culture & learning environment

 

Are you ready? Come grow with us!

🔍 Are you looking for something else? Check out our Career Page and our Website for more information.

 

We are all different and that is what makes us stronger! We hire great people from a wide variety of backgrounds, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it makes our company better.

commercetools celebrates being a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunities employer. If your professional profile aligns with our specific hiring requirements and company culture, then we encourage you to apply. We will assess your competencies, future potential, approach to learning and self-development and passion, and not your age, color, national origin, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, familial status, genetics, or disability.