Royal Caribbean Group

Principal, Software Engineering

Royal Caribbean Group • $150K — $180K *
Miami, FL 33186In-Person
Information Technology
8 - 10 years of experience
Today
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Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 10+ years of software engineering experience with a strong focus on both frontend and backend technologies.
  • Proven technical leader with the ability to drive architecture and influence teams without direct authority.
  • Expert-level knowledge of modern frontend technologies including React, Next.js, and micro-frontend architecture.
  • Deep experience with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) in both headful and headless contexts.
  • Hands-on experience designing AI solutions, especially in agentic systems and orchestration frameworks.
  • Strong backend proficiency in Node.js, Fastify, GraphQL, and Java services.
  • Solid understanding of cloud infrastructure using AWS and DevSecOps practices.

Responsibilities

  • Own the technical roadmap for the ecommerce platform and govern architectural standards across the stack.
  • Define frontend architectural standards and oversee AEM-integrated experiences.
  • Provide leadership for backend services, ensuring performance and reliability.
  • Champion AI adoption, transforming engineering practices with AI-assisted development.
  • Collaborate cross-functionally to align technical solutions with business goals.
  • Elevate engineering standards through mentorship, reviews, and training.
  • Lead initiatives to improve platform health and reduce technical debt.

Benefits

  • Onsite position based in Miami, Florida.
  • Work within a dynamic and innovative engineering culture.
  • Opportunity to lead and influence the design of cutting-edge digital commerce technologies.
Full Job Description
The Royal Caribbean Group's Global E-Commerce Team has an exciting career opportunity for a full-time Principal Engineer reporting to the Director of Engineering.

This position is onsite and based in Miami, Florida.

This position is also not eligible for work authorization sponsorship.

Position Summary:

As a Principal Engineer in our Global eCommerce Engineering organization, you will serve as the technical visionary and senior individual contributor responsible for shaping the end-to-end architecture, standards, and long-term roadmap of our digital commerce platform. This is not a people management role -
it is a technical leadership role of the highest caliber, where your influence will be felt across every engineering team, every layer of the stack, and every customer interaction on our platform.

Our ecommerce platform is built on a sophisticated micro-frontend architecture that blends React-basedSingle Page Applications (SPAs) with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) headful pages, backed by a modern Node.js/Java API layer, GraphQL federation, and cloud-native infrastructure on AWS. You will be the connective tissue across all of these surfaces - setting unified standards, eliminating architectural conflicts, defining integration patterns, and ensuring that our platform evolves with coherence and purpose.

Critically, you will be our AI champion. In an era of rapid GenAI adoption, you will lead the charge in transforming how our engineering community works - embedding AI-assisted development into our everyday practices, evaluating and standardizing AI tooling, and setting the example for what high-velocity, AI-augmented engineering looks like at scale.

You will be a key player in shaping how millions of customers consider, purchase, and plan their cruise vacations - and in building the engineering culture that makes that possible.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

1. Full-Stack Technical Vision & Architecture
  • Own and drive the end-to-end technical roadmap for the ecommerce platform, spanning frontend, backend, infrastructure, and integrations.
  • Define and enforce architectural standards across our micro-frontend architecture - governing the interplay between React SPAs, AEM headful pages, and shared platform services.
  • Establish integration patterns and design contracts that allow different application domain owners (e.g., booking, search, content, personalization) to build independently while composing seamlessly.
  • Identify and resolve architectural conflicts and overlaps across teams before they become rework - serving as the central technical authority for cross-cutting design decisions.
  • Champion scalable, maintainable, and high-performance architectures across the full stack, balancing pragmatism with long-term platform health.
  • Lead technical discovery, POCs, and architectural reviews for new capabilities, platform modernization efforts, and emerging technology adoption.


2. Frontend Excellence & AEM Integration
  • Define and enforce frontend architectural standards for all SPAs, micro-frontends, and AEM-integrated experiences.
  • Own the technical strategy for React/AEM interoperability - including component authoring models, client-side hydration, AEM Editable Templates, and content-driven experiences.
  • Drive end-to-end frontend performance ownership: Core Web Vitals, bundle optimization, lazy loading, SSR/SSG strategies, and AEM component efficiency.
  • Govern the Design System's technical evolution, ensuring consistent implementation across all frontend surfaces and teams.
  • Optimize AEM workflows for developer productivity, including local development environments and CI/CD pipeline integration.
  • Enforce frontend coding standards, accessibility (a11y), and testing practices (unit, integration, E2E) across all teams.


3. Backend Architecture & Platform Integration
  • Provide technical leadership and standards for backend services powering the ecommerce platform, including GraphQL API layers, Node.js/Fastify microservices, and Java-based services.
  • Define integration patterns between frontend and backend that minimize coupling, reduce duplication, and enable teams to iterate independently.
  • Set standards and best practices for caching strategies (including Redis), data persistence (MongoDB), and service reliability.
  • Guide infrastructure decisions in partnership with platform/DevOps teams - including AWS, Kubernetes, container orchestration, and CI/CD pipeline design using GitHub Actions and related tooling.
  • Ensure backend services meet performance, security, and compliance standards (SOX, DevSecOps) consistent with operating in a highly regulated, high-transaction environment.


4. AI & GenAI Transformation Leadership
  • Serve as the organization's AI champion - leading by example in adopting AI-assisted coding and development practices across all engineering teams.
  • Architect, design, and implement end-to-end agentic AI solutions - including autonomous multi-agent systems, tool-integrated reasoning workflows, and LLM orchestrated pipelines - that deliver personalized, intelligent, and seamless customer experiences across the ecommerce platform, from cruise discovery and search to booking and post-purchase engagement.
  • When not architecting world-class consumer-facing experiences, you are building internal tooling and agentic AI systems that optimize the entire SDLC - researching, evaluating, and standardizing GenAI tooling (e.g., Claude Code, AI code review tools, LLM-assisted development workflows) to drive engineering productivity, code quality, and delivery velocity at scale.
  • Develop and share best practices, playbooks, and workshops that enable engineers across the organization to effectively leverage AI in their daily workflows.
  • Drive the cultural shift toward AI-augmented engineering - reducing friction, building confidence, and positioning our engineering community as leaders in AI assisted software development within the travel and ecommerce industry.
  • Collaborate with engineering managers and product leaders to identify high-impact opportunities where AI/GenAI can accelerate platform development, improve quality, or unlock new customer experiences.
  • Stay at the forefront of AI/GenAI advancements relevant to software engineering and bring recommendations to leadership on emerging tools, techniques, and risks.


5. Cross-Team Collaboration & Technical Alignment
  • Partner with engineering managers, product managers, UX designers, and QA leads to design cohesive end-to-end solutions across the platform.
  • Advise application domain owners on technical feasibility, trade-offs, and integration approaches - ensuring platform-level concerns are not sacrificed for local team velocity.
  • Act as a bridge between technical complexity and business goals - translating strategic priorities into actionable technical direction and communicating technical constraints in terms stakeholders can act on.
  • Proactively surface and resolve cross-team dependencies before they block delivery.


6. Mentorship, Standards & Engineering Culture
  • Elevate the technical craft of the engineering organization through code reviews, architecture reviews, technical writing, workshops, and hands-on pairing.
  • Define and maintain platform-wide engineering standards, patterns, and documentation that reduce ambiguity and accelerate onboarding.
  • Identify and develop the next generation of technical leaders across the ecommerce engineering teams.
  • Foster a culture of engineering excellence, psychological safety, and continuous improvement.


7. Platform Health & Strategic Initiatives
  • Lead tech debt reduction initiatives with measurable outcomes and clear prioritization frameworks.
  • Establish and monitor platform health metrics - performance, reliability, security posture, and developer experience - and drive continuous improvement against these benchmarks.
  • Champion long-term platform investments alongside near-term delivery, ensuring the codebase remains a competitive advantage rather than a liability.


Qualifications, Knowledge & Skills:

Required:

  • 10+ years of software engineering experience with demonstrated depth across both frontend and backend disciplines.
  • Proven track record as a technical leader and senior individual contributor - setting standards, driving architecture, and influencing across teams without direct management authority.
  • Expert-level knowledge of modern frontend technologies: React, Next.js, micro frontend architecture, SPAs, and component-driven design.
  • Deep experience with Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) - including headful/headless integration patterns, Editable Templates, component authoring, and frontend/AEM interoperability.
  • Hands-on experience designing and implementing production-grade agentic AI solutions - including autonomous agents, multi-agent orchestration frameworks (e.g., LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen), tool-integrated reasoning workflows, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines - with demonstrated ability to take agentic systems from proof-of-concept through scalable production deployment.
  • Strong backend proficiency: Node.js, Fastify, GraphQL (federation and schema design), and Java services.
  • Solid understanding of caching strategies (Redis), database design (MongoDB), and API performance patterns.
  • Experience with cloud-native infrastructure: AWS, Kubernetes, container-based deployments, and GitHub Actions-based CI/CD pipelines.
  • Strong grasp of DevSecOps practices, compliance requirements (SOX), and security standards in regulated environments.
  • Exceptional ability to communicate technical vision, trade-offs, and architectural decisions to both engineering and non-engineering audiences.
  • Strong experience with frontend performance optimization: Core Web Vitals, bundle strategies, SSR/SSG, lazy loading, and observability.
  • Demonstrated experience with Design Systems - governance, implementation standards, and cross-team adoption.


Preferred:
  • Hands-on experience with AI-assisted development tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor, LLM-integrated workflows) and a passion for advancing AI adoption in software engineering practices.
  • Experience with AI/ML model integration - from POC through production deployment.
  • Background in ecommerce, travel, or other high-transaction digital platforms.
  • Experience defining and driving developer experience (DevEx) improvements at scale.


Agency and Third-Party Submissions: Please note this is a direct search by the Company, and applications through agencies and other third parties will not be accepted, nor will fees be paid for unsolicited resumes. Any unsolicited resumes will be considered the Company's property.

We know there's a lot to consider. As you go through the application process, our recruiters will be glad to provide guidance, and more relevant details to answer any additional questions. Thank you again for your interest in Royal Caribbean Group. We'll hope to see you onboard soon!

About Royal Caribbean Group

Royal Caribbean Group is a cruise vacation company with a global fleet of 63 ships traveling around the world. The company provides celebrity cruises and silversea cruises. Royal Caribbean Group was established in 1968 in Miami, Florida.

Royal Caribbean Group Careers

There has never been a more exciting time to explore job opportunities with Royal Caribbean Group, a leader in the global cruise industry known for innovation and excellence.

Work You’ll Do

Join Royal Caribbean Group's dynamic team to help redefine the travel experience for millions of guests worldwide. The company's commitment to growth and leadership in the cruise industry offers a unique platform for professionals to advance their careers. Transform the future of travel with Royal Caribbean Group, where diversity, innovation, and a passion for service converge to create extraordinary vacation experiences. Lead in a market where skills in technology, customer service, and operational excellence are prized. Royal Caribbean Group stands at the forefront of the travel industry, offering team members unparalleled opportunities for career advancement. Work alongside a global team of professionals dedicated to pioneering new paths in the cruise sector. Royal Caribbean Group fosters a culture of innovation and leadership, making it an ideal workplace for those aiming to make a significant impact.

Royal Caribbean Group Professional Pathways

The team is actively building a robust professional network, inviting individuals to master their career journey in the vibrant world of cruise travel.

Do Innovative Work

Engage with a diverse team at Royal Caribbean Group—professionals dedicated to reshaping the future of travel through continuous innovation and a deep understanding of the global travel market.

Drive Innovation and Leadership

Deliver targeted solutions and exceptional guest experiences by leveraging deep industry knowledge and a commitment to innovation that’s second to none.

Be Part of a Great Team

Join a workforce that thrives on collaboration and diversity. Royal Caribbean Group offers a variety of job opportunities that harness the capabilities of its expansive global network.

Future-proof Your Career

Royal Caribbean Group provides a wealth of opportunities for personal and professional development, supported by comprehensive training programs and a commitment to promoting from within.

Explore

Discover how Royal Caribbean Group is leading the way in employee satisfaction and guest service, setting new standards in the cruise industry.

The Royal Caribbean Group Advantage

With a focus on diversity, leadership, and professional growth, Royal Caribbean Group helps team members navigate their careers in an ever-evolving industry. The company's global scale and commitment to innovation offer unmatched opportunities for career advancement.

Stay Connected

Join the Team

Search open positions that match your skills and interests. Royal Caribbean Group looks for passionate, curious, creative, and solution-driven team players. SEARCH ROYAL CARIBBEAN JOBS

Keep Up to Date

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Learn more about Royal Caribbean Group
Size
10,001 employees
Industry
Hospitality & Recreation
* Ladders Estimates

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