Principal Engineer

MOO brings brands to life in a sustainable way, with a range of remarkable print and merchandise products. We combine design, technology, manufacturing and service, so that people can connect in memorable ways. Not online but out there, in real life. We started in 2004. Since then we’ve built an award-winning and much-loved brand, with customer satisfaction and Trustpilot ratings that make most businesses want to give up and hire an army of review bots. We’ve got half a million customers, mostly small and medium businesses in North America, the UK, and Europe – businesses that, like us, get all excited about putting something real and beautiful into people’s hands. Does that make us nerds? Probably, and we’re ok with that.  We’ve been given the highest business award in Britain, ‘The Queen’s Award for Enterprise’. Backed by venture capital, we’re part of Tech Nation’s ‘Future Fifty’, recently passing $1bn in lifetime revenue, and featuring in the Guardian’s top 10 UK start-ups list. Ok, we’ll stop bragging now. Today, we’re more than 400 people with our global HQ in London, UK, while we also have premises in Dagenham. In the US, you’ll find us in Boston, MA, as well as East Providence, RI and Denver, CO and with our most recent office expansion in Cape Town South Africa.MOO's engineering teams span the physical and digital worlds. Every order we take is manufactured after it is paid for, so the journey from "buy" to "delivered" runs through a factory as well as a database. That is true of the storefront, our design and customisation tools, cart, checkout and payments, business accounts, and equally true of order orchestration, manufacturing, fulfilment, shipping and the tooling our Customer Service and Operations teams use. The problems worth solving here run the length of that journey, and the hardest ones are usually the ones that cross it.As we scale, we're bringing together two ecommerce platforms while also experimenting with our customers' browsing experiences to support growth. On the other side of the order, we're consolidating tooling for Customer Service and Operations, improving data visibility across the order journey, integrating new carriers, and increasing manufacturing capacity while protecting customer experience and margin. We're also changing how we build, with AI-assisted development now part of everyday engineering practice here.You'll partner closely with engineering teams across our entire ecosystem, product leadership, and our Platform group, to deliver a coherent, scalable architecture and unblock cross-team delivery.Bring deep technical leadership across MOO's ecommerce ecosystem, from storefront and checkout through to delivered. You'll support in setting the architectural direction for that journey and enable multiple teams to move quickly and efficiently.Balance essential scaling of today's systems with an iterative migration away from legacy components. Define contracts, events and guardrails that make our ecosystem observable, resilient and cost-efficient. Set the standard for how we use AI-assisted development, so we get the speed without lowering the quality bar. Translate operational requirements from Operations and Customer Service, and commercial requirements from Product and Trading, into pragmatic platform improvements.You'll work with our engineering team, who are largely based in the UK, and with stakeholders at our manufacturing facilities in East Providence, Rhode Island and Dagenham, London.Senior IC role reporting into senior leadership (VP of Technology). Scope spans multiple teams across ecommerce and post-purchase, partnering closely with Product leadership and Platform and Architecture peers to help drive what the future of MOOs systems look like.*Travel to our East Providence facility a couple of times a year* - ( we are able open to finding alternatives with anyone for whom that travel is not workable)ResponsibilitiesDomain leadership and technical strategy:  Work with other engineering leaders to define the architectural roadmap across the whole order journey, spanning storefront, design and customisation tooling, checkout and payments, order orchestration, manufacturing (IMFG, our manufacturing execution system, and our Tulip shop-floor apps), fulfilment, shipping and Customer Service toolingScale and reliability:  Lead cross-team initiatives that increase throughput and reduce cost-to-serve. Get us through peak trading without heroics, from traffic spikes at the front of the funnel through to production release at the back, and make sure we know in advance what would break first. Improve observability and operability across the flow from "buy" to "delivered", reducing "where is my order" contacts and manual interventionsAI-assisted development:  Set the standard for how engineers across your estate use AI tooling day to day. Work with Security, Legal and Platform to define guardrails on review, testing and security, decide where these tools genuinely help and where they do not, and raise the practice of the teams around you rather than only your ownData and tooling coherence:  Assist in enabling a 360-degree order view and actioning capabilities for Customer Service and Operations by standardising data pipelines and surfacing the right aggregates in [our developer portal / Backstage] and related toolsGovernance, facilitation and mentorship:  Mentor Staff and Senior Engineers across all of the engineering department. Facilitate design reviews, hackathons and workshops, resolve technical conflicts, and align stakeholders on pragmatic, high-impact solutionsAbout youWe do not expect one person to arrive with all of this. If you recognise yourself in most of it, we would like to hear from you.Proven track record shaping architecture and delivery for complex ecommerce estates at scale, ideally including some combination of storefront and checkout, order orchestration, manufacturing or fulfilment, shipping, returns, and Customer Service tooling. Real depth in one part of that journey and credible breadth across the restExpert at designing service and event contracts, data flows and reliability patterns that enable multiple teams to ship safely and quicklyYou have taken systems through peak trading, or an equivalent step change in volume, and can tell us what broke and what you changed as a result. Written, drawn or talked through, whichever suits youA considered view on where AI-assisted development earns its place in professional engineering and where it does not, and an interest in how a team adopts it well rather than only how you use it yourselfAble to align Operations, Customer Service, Product and Engineering, resolve technical disagreement, and translate architecture into measurable business impact. Used to working with teams in more than one time zoneAble to balance migration with tactical scaling work in live systemsNice To Have'sExperience with manufacturing execution systems, batching and scheduling algorithms, and warehouse or dispatch integrationsPrior work migrating ecommerce platforms and improving Customer Service agent experience through unified data and the ability to act on itExperience of B2B or multi-tenant commerce, where an administrator buys on behalf of an organisation against controlled templates and budgetsHands-on experience introducing AI-assisted development across an engineering organisation, including the parts that went wrongOutcomes you will driveEcommerce performance and reliability: storefront and checkout stay fast and available through peak, and teams can change conversion-critical paths without fearReliability and flow: uptime and lead-time accuracy across the whole order journey, from checkout availability through to deliveryPeak readiness: we trade without heroics throughout the year, and we know in advance what would break firstFaster and cheaper dispatch through automated carrier integrations and improved lead-time logicHigher manufacturing throughput via robust batching, scheduling and performance improvements in IMFG and Tulip appsCoherent architecture and data model across the order journey that accelerates migration while stabilising today's operationsFaster delivery through AI-assisted development, with no loss in the quality of what we shipWhat’s it like to work at MOO? MOO’s the kind of workplace where you can really be yourself. Dye your hair purple. Hit the sofa with your laptop. Whatever helps you feel comfortable and happy at work. We want to help you grow in your career and set you up for success – while also recognising the importance of a healthy work/life balance. That’s why we offer 25 days holiday rising by one day for each year here (for 5 years), a matched pension scheme, and paid parental leave. We’ll offer you private healthcare, life insurance, a season ticket loan, and a cycle to work scheme. We also offer flexible work schedules with hybrid and remote working for certain roles as well as a Work From Anywhere program. Diversity StatementWe are working hard to create a representative, inclusive and super-friendly team, because we know that different experiences, perspectives and backgrounds make for a better workplace. And that creates a better experience for our customers. MOO doesn’t discriminate on the basis of race, colour, religion or belief, gender, national origin, age, sexual orientation, marital status, disability or any other protected class. As a design and technology company we have a desire and a responsibility to build a business that represents the world around us. So we strive to create a values-driven, purposeful and highly empowered organisation that we are all proud to work for. And we are committed to continuous investment in building an open and inclusive environment, welcoming a diverse audience of candidates who see themselves working and thriving at MOO. Therefore, we’d like to invite you to complete this optional survey to help us evaluate our inclusion and diversity efforts. Completing this form is entirely voluntary and if you decide not to it won’t in any way affect your job application. We keep the information separate from your application and it is kept secure and confidential, it is only used to better our inclusion and diversity efforts. By submitting this information, you consent to MOO's processing of it for these purposes.We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.