Principal Software Engineer, Store Operations (REMOTE)

With a career at The Home Depot, you can be yourself and also be part of something bigger.

Position Purpose:

The Principal Software Engineer for Store Systems & Operations is a senior technical leader responsible for architecting, developing, and optimizing end-to-end software and hardware solutions that directly enable Home Depot’s most critical in-store initiatives. This role is central to ensuring aisles and bays are consistently stocked and that cart-based image capture systems operate with maximum reliability to support real-time inventory accuracy and operational excellence.

You will drive the technical vision and execution for systems that power task assignment and pack-down workflows for Merchandising Execution Team (MET) associates and Store Operations, ensuring seamless collaboration and efficiency across teams. A key focus will be on resolving reliability challenges in image capture by integrating advanced machine learning models, robust device management, and resilient software architectures. You will work hands-on with ML, Device, and Software teams to design, implement, and continuously improve solutions that leverage AI/ML for image analysis, automate tasking, and optimize store processes.

This position requires deep expertise in hardware and network integration, enabling reliable data flow between in-store devices and cloud platforms (with a strong emphasis on Google Cloud Platform). You will define and uphold service level objectives, lead performance tuning, and ensure security and scalability of all store systems. As a technical mentor, you will foster a culture of innovation, reliability, and cross-team knowledge sharing, while also engaging with third-party vendors and the open-source community to accelerate solution delivery and maintain industry best practices.

Your leadership will directly impact the efficiency of store operations, the accuracy of inventory management, and the overall customer experience by ensuring that technology solutions are robust, scalable, and aligned with Home Depot’s business goals.

Key Responsibilities:

• 70% Delivery & Execution
• Collaborates and pairs with other product team members (UX, engineering, and product management) to create secure, reliable, scalable software solutions
• Documents, reviews and ensures that all quality and change control standards are met
• Writes custom code or scripts to automate infrastructure, monitoring services, and test cases
• Writes custom code or scripts to do "destructive testing" to ensure adequate resiliency in production
• Creates meaningful dashboards, logging, alerting, and responses to ensure that issues are captured and addressed proactively
• Contributes to enterprise-wide tools to drive destructive testing, automation, or engineering empowerment
• Identifies product enhancements (client-facing or technical) to create a better experience for the end users
• Identifies unsecured code areas and implements fixes as they are discovered with or without tooling
• Identifies, implements, and shares technical solutions that can be used across the organization
• Creates and architects foundational code elements that can be reused many times by a product
• Creates meaningful architecture diagrams and other documentation needed for security reviews or other interested parties
• Defines Service Level Objectives for product to constantly measure their reliability in production and help prioritize backlog work
• 20% Support & Enablement:
• Fields questions from other product teams or support teams
• Monitors tools and participates in conversations to encourage collaboration across product teams
• Provides application support for software running in production
• Proactively monitors production Service Level Objectives for products
• Works with vendors and the open-source community to help identify and implement feature enhancements in software products
• Works with other product teams to create API specifications and contracts for shared data
• Proactively reviews the performance and capacity of all aspects of production: code, infrastructure, data, and message processing
• Triages high priority issues and outages as they arise
• 10% Learning:
• Participates in and leads learning activities around modern software design and development core practices (communities of practice)
• Learns, through reading, tutorials, and videos, new technologies and best practices being used within other technology organizations
• Attends conferences and learns how to apply new technologies where appropriate

Direct Manager/Direct Reports:

• Typically reports to the Software Engineer Manager or Sr. Manager, Technology Director or Sr. Director.
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