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 solut…