Principal Engineer Platform

Principal Software Engineer – Platform Engineering

As a Principal Software Engineer on the Platform Engineering team, you will provide shared technical leadership across integration platforms, services, and teams that enable enterprise-scale business capabilities. You are a hands-on engineer who designs, builds, and evolves cloud-first, enterprise-grade integration solutions while influencing standards, patterns, and long-term technical direction across Columbia Sportswear.

You operate with a wide sphere of influence , partnering closely with architects, product leaders, and engineers to solve complex cross-domain problems and raise the overall engineering bar for the organization.

HOW YOU’LL MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Lead the technical design and architecture of enterprise integration services, APIs, and event-driven solutions using cloud PaaS platforms (primarily Microsoft Azure)

Own and evolve integration standards and patterns, ensuring solutions are secure, scalable, maintainable, and observable

Translate complex business processes into reliable software solutions that support multiple domains across the enterprise

Operate as a senior technical leader within agile teams, guiding implementation while remaining hands-on with critical code paths

Mentor and coach engineers across levels, strengthening engineering fundamentals, design thinking, and delivery practices

Drive adoption of modern DevOps, CI/CD, and automated testing practices across integration services

Proactively identify technical risks, system gaps, and architectural debt, and lead initiatives to remediate them

Partner with product owners, business stakeholders, and enterprise architects to communicate updates, inform roadmap decisions and priority, and meet business needs.

YOU ARE

A technical authority who leads through influence, not position

Comfortable operating in ambiguous, cross-team problem spaces

A strong communicator who can articulate technical tradeoffs to both engineering and non-technical stakeholders

Skilled and concise with asynchronous communication practices in a global team setting

Curious, pragmatic, and continuously learning—balancing innovation with operational stability

Passionate about delivering high-quality software and improving engineering culture at scale

A proactive communicator who keeps your communication channel open between business stakeholders, your teammates, and enterprise architects.

YOU HAVE

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Systems, or equivalent practical experience

8+ years of professional software engineering experience, including leading or owning complex systems

Deep experience building and operating enterprise integration services, including RESTful APIs and event-driven architecture

Proven expertise with one or more cloud platforms (Azure strongly preferred; AWS or GCP acceptable)

Strong proficiency in modern OOP languages (C#, Java, Node.js) and solid knowledge of design patterns and data structures

Good to have Azure Architect certification

Demonstrated experience designing for scale, resilience, and security in distributed systems

Advanced experience with test automation, CI/CD pipelines, and production support

Experience working within Agile at scale (portfolio-level or multi-team environments)

This job description is not meant to be an all-inclusive list of duties and responsibilities, but constitutes a general definition of the position's scope and function in the company.