Principal Staff Engineer - Web Platform

Company and Vision PlanetArt’s vision is to be the leading seller of personalized and make-on-demand products worldwide. We provide consumers with unmatched tools and content and an unparalleled end-to-end customer experience that result in high-quality, meaningful finished products and memorable celebrations of live events. The company’s brands include the popular FreePrints and FreePrints Photobooks apps and the industry leading SimplytoImpress card and stationery site, as well as Personal Creations, CafePress and ISeeMe! Visit www.planetart.com to learn more about our brands. We have more than 500 team members across multiple offices, primarily in Calabasas CA, San Diego CA, Woodridge IL, Minneapolis, MN and Pleasanton, CA. We also have team members in two company-owned offices in China, as well as in Europe. Job Overview PlanetArt is seeking a Principal Staff Engineer-Web Platform to serve as a senior technical leader within our engineering organization and a key partner to the VP of Engineering. This is a highly hands-on role focused on building, operating, and scaling high-traffic ecommerce web platforms in a fast-moving production environment. Reporting directly to the VP of Engineering, this engineer will play a critical role in architecting, developing, troubleshooting, and maintaining our LAMP-based web applications and AWS infrastructure. The ideal candidate is equally comfortable writing production code, diagnosing complex site reliability issues, managing cloud infrastructure, and leading technical problem-solving during high-severity incidents. This role requires strong operational judgment and the ability to independently own production challenges across application, database, infrastructure, and deployment layers. The engineer will collaborate closely with our China-based development organization, serving as a senior US-based technical lead responsible for cross-team coordination, code quality, architectural guidance, and production stability. This is an ideal opportunity for an experienced engineer who thrives in high-scale ecommerce environments and enjoys combining deep application engineering with modern cloud operations and production ownership. PLEASE NOTE: Candidates much be local to or willing to relocate to the Calabasas area as we operate on a hybrid work model (3 days onsite, 2 remote) What You’ll Do Key Responsibilities Full-Stack Platform Engineering: Design, develop, and maintain scalable features and services across our LAMP-based ecommerce platform, with a strong focus on reliability, performance, maintainability, and operational excellence. Production Operations & Incident Response : Act as a senior technical escalation point for complex production incidents, troubleshooting issues across application, infrastructure, networking, database, CDN, and deployment layers. Lead root cause analysis and drive long-term stability improvements. AWS Infrastructure Ownership : Manage and optimize AWS infrastructure, including deployment architecture, scaling strategies, observability, security, disaster recovery, and cost efficiency. Partner closely with DevOps and engineering leadership on operational best practices. High-Scale Performance Optimization : Monitor and improve application, database, and infrastructure performance for high-traffic consumer web applications. Identify bottlenecks and implement scalable solutions to improve uptime, latency, and system resilience. Cross-Functional Technical Leadership: Partner with Product, Design, Operations, and Customer Experience teams to translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions and ensure successful project execution. Global Engineering Collaboration : Work closely with the China-based engineering team to coordinate development efforts, conduct code reviews, align on architectural direction, manage releases, and maintain strong engineering communication across time zones. Code Quality & Engineering Standards : Champion high engineering standards through code reviews, testing strategies, documentation, observability, and operational best practices. Drive continuous improvement in system reliability and development processes. Technical Mentorship & Leadership : Provide technical mentorship and architectural guidance across the engineering organization. Influence technical direction through hands-on leadership, strong execution, and collaborative problem-solving.