Principal Engineer - UI

Title: Principal Engineer - UI

Reports To: Director of Engineering

Location: Pittsburgh, PA

About American Eagle

American Eagle is a youth culture brand grounded in denim. Our purpose extends beyond making the best jeans-we embrace self expression, culture, optimism and connection. Through the brand platform Live Your Life, we empower our community to be who they want to be all while wearing the clothes that make them most confident.

Specifically in UI Engineering we are working on a strategic transition to modernize our e-commerce platform, which involves a complete rebuilding effort using Next.js, moving away from legacy Ember.js for our AE.com single-page web application. Beyond this, we are deeply committed to continuously maturing our development process with a new and active focus on unlocking and experimenting with AI tooling across every aspect of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) to enhance efficiency and innovation.

Get to Know the Role:

You are a high-level architect and technical visionary driven to develop ambitious enterprise applications. As the Principal Engineer for Web, you will be the "Technical North Star" for our web platform, serving as the bridge between our legacy foundations and our modern Next.js future.

You thrive on complex challenges and possess a constant drive for engineering excellence. You will define the global standards for our web architecture and provide the technical leadership necessary to drive best-in-class delivery. Your influence will guide our team to develop the most performant and stable experiences for our customer while at the same time maturing operational excellence within our internal SDLC.

What You’ll Do:

• Drive Architectural Evolution: Lead the multi-year strategy for modernizing our core web platform, currently focused on a large-scale transition from a legacy Ember.js single-page application to a modern, edge-ready Next.js framework.
• Manage Hybrid Technical States: Design and oversee the interoperability layers that allow legacy and modern codebases to coexist seamlessly during transitional periods, ensuring zero impact on the customer experience.
• Own the Web Technical Foundation: Define and maintain the enterprise "Web Boilerplate" and core libraries, ensuring long-term consistency in state management, rendering patterns, and integration with the AEO Design System.
• Lead AI-Augmented Engineering: Pioneer the integration of Agentic AI (Cursor, Gemini, Qodo) into the SDLC to institutionalize institutional logic, automate testing, and accelerate the "Mean Time to Contribution" for distributed teams.
• Establish Technical Governance for Strategic Partners: Serve as the primary technical quality bar for vendor partners, enforcing standardized "Definition of Done" criteria and 100% automated ticket gating.
• Optimize Developer Experience (DX): Architect the local development environments, CI/CD feedback loops, and tooling that empower a global engineering team to ship code with high velocity and zero manual overhead.
• Monitor and Enforce Performance Budgets: Own the long-term roadmap for Core Web Vitals and SEO performance, utilizing Real User Monitoring (RUM) to validate architectural changes against business conversion.
• Collaborate as a Strategic Partner: Work closely with Product and UX leadership to translate a multi-year business vision into scalable, resilient technical roadmaps.
• Champion Internal Opportunities: Influence cross-functional technical direction by driving efficient uses of the web platform in other use cases beyond customer facing AE.com applications

What You Bring:

• Extensive Technical Leadership: 10+ years of software engineering experience, with 3+ years in a Staff or Principal role leading the architectural direction for high-scale, enterprise-level web platforms.
• Mastery of Modern Web Architectures: Deep expertise in Next.js, React, and Node.js, with a proven ability to design scalable micro-frontend or "island" architectures that support multi-year framework transitions.
• Expertise in Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) Patterns: Proven track record of architecting and implementing BFF layers (via Node.js, GraphQL, or Express) to orchestrate data from multiple downstream microservices and legacy APIs, optimizing payload delivery for web and mobile clients.
• Legacy Modernization Experience: Proven track record of successfully decomposing and migrating complex legacy monoliths (e.g., Ember.js, Backbone, or Angular.js) into modern, high-performance environments without interrupting business operations.
• Design Systems & Storybook Expertise: Significant experience building, documenting, and scaling enterprise Design Systems using Storybook to ensure UI consistency and component reusability across multiple squads.
• Systems Thinking & Governance: Demonstrated experience in building and enforcing global engineering standards, including the creation of enterprise-grade boilerplates, CI/CD pipelines (Bitbucket), and automated quality gates.
• AI-First Mindset: Practical experience leveraging Agentic AI and LLMs (Gemini, Code Assist) to accelerate documentation, perform automated code audits, and improve overall engineering throughput.
• Performance-Driven Mentality: Deep understanding of Web Vitals, SEO optimization, and browser internals, with the ability to use Real User Monitoring (RUM) data to drive architectural decisions.
• Strategic Partner Management: Experience governing the technical output of distributed teams and external vendor partners, ensuring high-quality contributions and adherence to the "Definition of Done."
• Advanced Testing & Observability: Expert knowledge of enterprise testing suites (Playwright) and observability platforms (New Relic, Quantum Metric, OTe) to ensure system reliability during major technical shifts.

Nice to have:

• Micro-Frontend (MFE) Orchestration: Experience with Module Federation or similar patterns to manage independent deployments within a unified shell.
• GraphQL: Deep knowledge of schema design for optimizing data orchestration in complex environments.
• Event-Driven Architecture: Experience integrating frontend applications with asynchronous backend systems (e.g., Kafka, RabbitMQ).
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Proficiency in Terraform or AWS CDK to influence and tune the hosting environment for maximum performance.
• Retail/E-commerce Specifics: Domain expertise in headless commerce, inventory orchestration, and high-traffic transactional environments.
• Web Accessibility (a11y) Specialist: Advanced knowledge of WCAG standards and experience conducting automated and manual accessibility audits at scale.
• Experience with Optimizely experimentation platform
• Experience with Google Tag Manager for 3rd-party integration management, including SGTM
• Familiarity with native app development (iOS/Android) for cross-platform alignment.
• Enjoy wearing jeans to work every day (not just AE jeans :-) )

Perks: Why You’ll Love it Here

• Generous employee discount
• Summer Fridays
• Casual dress code
• Hybrid schedule
• FOMO events (Exciting company-wide events)

Pay/Benefits Information:

• Actual starting pay is determined by various factors, including but not limited to relevant experience and location.
• Subject to eligibility requirements, associates may receive health care benefits (including medical, vision, and dental); wellness benefits; 401(k) retirement benefits; life and disability insurance; employee stock purchase program; paid time off; paid sick leave; and parental leave and benefits.
• Paid Time Off, paid sick leave, and holiday pay vary by job level and type, job location, employment classification (part-time or full-time / exempt or non-exempt), and years of service. For additional information, please click here.
• AEO may also provide discretionary bonuses and other incentives at its discretion.