Software Engineer - Central Engineering

Costco IT is responsible for the technical future of Costco Wholesale, the third largest retailer in the world with wholesale operations in fourteen countries. Despite our size and explosive international expansion, we continue to provide a family, employee centric atmosphere in which our employees thrive and succeed.

This is an environment unlike anything in the high-tech world and the secret of Costco's success is its culture. The value Costco puts on its employees is well documented in articles from a variety of publishers including Bloomberg and Forbes. Our employees and our members come FIRST. Costco is well known for its generosity and community service and has won many awards for its philanthropy. The company joins with its employees to take an active role in volunteering by sponsoring many opportunities to help others.

Come join the Costco Wholesale IT family. Costco IT is a dynamic, fast-paced environment, working through exciting transformation efforts. We are building the next generation retail environment where you will be surrounded by dedicated and highly professional employees.

Software Engineers perform development work across the technology stack (both front-end/back-end expertise). They are versatile in how they can add value, demonstrating the ability to manage the completion of projects that involve databases, backend services, or the development of front end applications. They should be able to demonstrate a strong understanding of emerging technologies to support the development of new solutions. Software Engineers understand the full technology stack and underlying applications, services, and databases in order to ensure optimal performance.

This IT Operations Engineer will be a critical leader and technical expert responsible for ensuring the stability, performance, and scalability of our complex enterprise-level IT infrastructure and applications that underpin our global retail and supply chain operations. This role demands a proactive, hands-on engineer with deep expertise in operational excellence, automation, incident management, and continuous improvement. Driving strategic initiatives to enhance system resilience, reduce mean time to recovery (MTTR), optimize costs, and champion a culture of operational excellence, and continuous delivery across diverse technology stacks. This role is pivotal in ensuring robust and seamless collaboration between teams responsible for developing and maintaining high-performing platforms and services, aligning platform designs with strategic goals, and ensuring architectural consistency and system interoperability across the division.

If you want to be a part of one of the worldwide BEST companies "to work for", simply apply and let your career be reimagined.

ROLE

Operational Leadership & Strategy:

Leads and mentors a team of engineers, providing technical guidance, sharing best practices, and fostering a culture of continuous learning and growth to strengthen technical expertise and know-how within our operations and product community.

Develops and executes a strategic platform vision for global operations and related omnichannel experiences, aligning with organizational goals.

Acts as a subject matter expert (SME) and technical escalation point for complex operational challenges and critical incidents.

Attracts, retains, develops, and motivates top technology talent within the operations domain.

Oversees the proactive monitoring, analysis, and tuning of critical production systems, databases, and network infrastructure to ensure optimal performance and stability.

Implements robust telemetry, monitoring, and alerting solutions to provide real-time visibility into system health and potential issues.

Leads root cause analysis (RCA) efforts for major incidents, driving permanent solutions to prevent recurrence.

Troubleshoots and optimizes automation, reliability, and monitoring for delivered products.

Develops "best-in-class" engineering for services by ensuring that services and components are well-defined, modularized, reusable, secure, reliable, diagnosable, and actively monitored.

Drives the adoption of automation and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) principles to streamline deployment, configuration, and operational tasks across on-premise and cloud environments.

Champions CI/CD practices for operational changes and collaborate with development teams to embed operational readiness into the software development lifecycle.

Develops and deploys complex automation scripts and tools to streamline infrastructure management, application deployment, and other engineering processes.

Evaluates and implements new tools and technologies to enhance operational efficiency and reduce manual intervention.

Leads and coordinates rapid response efforts during critical incidents, ensuring swift resolution and effective communication to stakeholders.

Develops and maintains comprehensive runbooks and standard operating procedures (SOPs) for incident, problem, and change management.

Implements and enforces rigorous change management processes to minimize operational risk.

Serves as a point of escalation for teams facing complex challenges.

Collaborates extensively with engineering, architecture, security, and business teams to ensure seamless operational handovers and support for new initiatives.

Gains and maintains a working understanding of Costco's business and collaborates with cross-functional teams, including product managers, architects, and other engineering teams, to drive the implementation of scalable and reliable solutions.

Participates in architecture and design reviews to ensure operational considerations are embedded from the outset.

Assists in development of design documents, white papers, training documents, and software architectural documents. Leads workshop sessions.

Ensures all operational practices adhere to security policies, compliance regulations (e.g., PCI, SOX), and industry best practices.

Implements and enforces secure access controls and audit logging for all production environments.

Implements and manages security controls in specific domains (e.g., cloud, network, applications).

Conducts peer code reviews for the software changes made by other engineers within a team.

REQUIRED
15 years of experience in IT operations, site reliability engineering (SRE), software engineering, or platform engineering, with at least 5 years in a leadership, director, or principal-level role managing and implementing technical delivery within a large-scale, global enterprise environment.

Deep expertise in managing and optimizing complex enterprise-level systems (e.g., ERP, WMS, e-commerce platforms) across various operating systems (Linux, Windows) and high-volume, high-velocity platforms.

Proven expertise in working with cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform) to architect and implement scalable and efficient platforms and services.

Expert in using modern software development tools, Git, branching and versioning patterns and practices, and continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines.

Strong proficiency in at least one scripting/automation language (e.g., Python, PowerShell, Bash) and object-oriented code, scripting, and infrastructure as code (e.g., Terraform).

Extensive experience with modern monitoring, logging, and observability tools (e.g., Splunk, Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana).

Solid understanding of networking concepts (TCP/IP, DNS, Load Balancing) and the ability to configure, manage, and troubleshoot network infrastructure, including cloud networking components.

Demonstrated ability to lead during critical incidents, perform root cause analysis, and drive problem resolution, taking ownership and responsibility of critical issues.

Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills, with the ability to dissect complex technical challenges and propose innovative solutions.

Strong communication and leadership abilities, with a proven track record of collaborating effectively in cross-functional teams, mentoring, and motivating software engineers.

Experience leading engineering teams in an Agile/Scrum environment.

Positive, can-do attitude and value collaboration a must.

Certifications: Cloud Fundamentals (Google Cloud Platform/Azure) and Data CDMP (Certified Data Management Professional) - Associate, prior or within a year of acceptance of position.
Recommended
Master's degree in a relevant technical field.

Experience with specific retail industry systems (e.g., POS, supply chain management, inventory systems) and deep knowledge of one or more retail discipline(s).

ITIL certification.

Experience with containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes).

Knowledge of database administration principles (SQL Server, Oracle, NoSQL).

Experience with configuration management tools (e.g., Ansible, Puppet, Chef).

Solution design and implementation governance experience.

Extensive experience in designing and developing enterprise services and microservice architecture.

Expert in C# programming language with additional experience in SQL and NoSQL databases.

Experience working in a Product Management environment.

Security GSEC (GIAC Security Essentials) certification.

Proficient in Google Workspace applications, including Sheets, Docs, Slides, and Gmail.

Required Documents

Cover Letter

Resume

California applicants, please click here to review the Costco Applicant Privacy Notice.

Pay Ranges:

Level 1 - $85,000 - $110,000

Level 2 - $105,000 - $135,000

Level 3 - $130,000 - $160,000

Level SR - $150,000 - $190,000, Bonus and Restricted Stock Unit (RSU) eligible

Level Staff - $180,000 - $225,000, Bonus and Restricted Stock Unit (RSU) eligible

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off, health benefits - medical/dental/vision/hearing aid/pharmacy/behavioral health/employee assistance, health care reimbursement account, dependent care assistance plan, short-term disability and long-term disability insurance, AD&D insurance, life insurance, 401(k), stock purchase plan to eligible employees.

Costco is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. Costco is an equal opportunity employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or any other legally protected status. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request to

If hired, you will be required to provide proof of authorization to work in the United States. In some cases, applicants and employees for selected positions will not be sponsored for work authorization, including, but not limited to H1-B visas.