remote
Principal Engineer, AI Developer Experience
Principal Engineer, AI Developer Experience
As a Principal Engineer, AI Developer Experience, you will own the technical architecture of the agent-readable Shop Builder platform, defining API contracts and leading the design and delivery of critical developer tools and environments. This role involves setting technical standards, mentoring engineers, and shaping the technical culture of the team.
About the role
About the Role
As a Principal Engineer, AI Developer Experience, you will be instrumental in shaping the technical foundation for how AI agents and developers interact with the Shop Builder platform. This role involves deep architectural ownership, defining technical standards, and leading the delivery of critical developer-facing systems.
Responsibilities
- Own the technical architecture of the agent-readable Shop Builder platform: which APIs to expose, in what shape, through which surfaces (REST, SDK, MCP, CLI).
- Define the interface contracts that LLMs and developers interact with — React component APIs, custom block schemas, theme tokens, data binding formats — and maintain them with the rigor of a public API.
- Design and lead delivery of the MCP server that allows AI agents (Claude Code, Cursor, etc.) to build, deploy, and operate Shop Builder storefronts end-to-end without the editor in the loop.
- Architect the CLI and local development environment: how developers scaffold projects, iterate locally, preview changes, and push to production.
- Define the deploy, versioning, and rollback model for developer-published content — custom blocks, themes, and layouts.
- Design the sandbox and preview environment system so agents and developers can iterate without touching live partner sites.
- Set the documentation standard: written for LLMs and humans as first-class users, maintained from single canonical sources and published to every surface (CLI help, dev docs, MCP tool descriptions, AI context).
- Lead the eval harness architecture: how the team measures whether an LLM-generated block, theme, or layout is correct before it ships.
- Collaborate with Principal/Staff Engineers across payments, auth, live ops, and catalog to pull inbound capabilities into coherent developer-facing surfaces.
- Serve as the technical bar-raiser for the team: define code standards, review critical implementation decisions, and mentor the Tech Lead and engineers.
- Contribute to hiring and define the technical culture of the team from day one.