Principal Software Engineer

Job Location: Dallas, TX

Overview

This is an opportunity to be a key player in the next phase of Hershey's one-year-old software engineering organization as it grows into multiple product-focused teams. As a Principal Software Engineer, you will work with a high degree of autonomy shaping architecture, guiding cross-team initiatives, mentoring other engineers, and continuously improving engineering quality. You will help establish how we build and operate while still being hands-on, building alongside the rest of the team.

Your software will directly support Hershey's business teams' daily activity through products such as assortment planning, sales routing, and sales coaching with more to come. You will connect technical decisions to product direction and business outcomes, partnering with engineers, product managers, business teams, and other technical leaders across multiple teams.

This is a rare opportunity to shape both systems and engineering culture as the organization grows. If you enjoy solving real business problems, influencing technical direction, and helping other engineers succeed - without formal people management - then we'd love to tell you more.

Responsibilities

Lead Cross-Team Technical Work

You lead technical efforts that span multiple teams or services. This includes helping define system boundaries, integration patterns, and shared approaches. You work across teams to align designs, manage technical risks, and ensure solutions scale as the business grows.

Shape Architecture and Technical Direction

You play a key role in architectural decisions within your domain, contributing to long-term system design and technology choices. You evaluate trade-offs around scalability, reliability, cost, and operational complexity, and document designs that other engineers can confidently build against.

Tackle the Hardest Technical Problems

You take ownership of the most complex and business-critical technical issues, such as major production incidents, persistent performance problems, or systemic reliability gaps. You focus on root causes and durable fixes that improve system health over time.

Raise Engineering and Operational Quality

You help set and reinforce good engineering practices across teams, including testing, deployment, observability, and incident response. You collaborate with platform, security, and infrastructure partners to ensure best practices are built into shared tooling and workflows.

Mentor and Grow Other Engineers

You mentor engineers at multiple levels through design feedback, technical coaching, and informal guidance. You help unblock teams, model strong engineering judgment, and intentionally share ownership in ways that help others grow into larger technical roles.

Qualifications

Required
7+ years of professional software engineering experience, or equivalent depth and impact
Experience designing, building, and supporting complex production systems
Demonstrated ability to influence technical decisions across multiple teams
Strong debugging and problem-solving skills, especially in production environments
Ability to communicate technical ideas clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences

Preferred
Experience working in highly ambiguous or fast-evolving environments
Familiarity with modern distributed systems and cloud platforms
Experience defining or influencing engineering standards beyond a single team
Experience guiding teams using AI/ML or LLM-based services, including architectural design, API integration, and quality considerations

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The Hershey Company is an Equal Opportunity Employer. The policy of The Hershey Company is to extend opportunities to qualified applicants and employees on an equal basis regardless of an individual's race, color, gender, age, national origin, religion, citizenship status, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, transgender status, physical or mental disability, protected veteran status, genetic information, pregnancy, or any other categories protected by applicable federal, state or local laws.

The Hershey Company is an Equal Opportunity Employer - Minority/Female/Disabled/Protected Veterans.

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