Senior Engineer 1

Overview

About Catalyst Brands:

Catalyst Brands is a leading U.S.-based retail organization formed in 2025 through the merger of JCPenney and SPARC Group, combining multiple iconic fashion brands under one umbrella. The company manages a diversified portfolio of well-known brands including Aéropostale, Brooks Brothers, Nautica, Lucky Brand, and JCPenney. Headquartered in Plano, Texas, Catalyst Brands focuses on delivering modern retail experiences while leveraging the heritage of established global brands. With a workforce of over tens of thousands and multi-billion-dollar revenue, the organization operates at a large scale across retail, e-commerce, and supply chain domains. The company emphasizes innovation, digital transformation, and customer-centric strategies to enhance brand value and consumer engagement. Catalyst Brands is expanding its global presence, including a growing capability centre in India that supports technology, digital operations, and analytics. It aims to drive operational excellence and business growth by integrating technology, data-driven insights, and efficient retail practices.

Position Overview

We are seeking an experienced Senior Platform Engineer to help define, build, and evolve our internal Digital platform, treating it as a product that empowers engineering teams to deliver features faster, securely and reliably. The ideal candidate combines deep technical expertise with a strong product mindset, focusing on usability, reliability, and continuous improvement based on developer feedback.

Key Responsibilities

• Deliver platform capabilities that solve real pain points for engineering teams.
• Develop scalable, resilient Spring Boot/Java based microservices and modules.
• Implement and manage critical microservices patterns, including Circuit Breakers and Service Mesh solutions, to enhance system resilience and observability.
• Automate DB schema versioning and data access frameworks.
• Build secure-by-default patterns into APIs and microservices.
• Improve API lifecycle management using techniques such as API virtualization and consumer-driven contracts.
• Develop and improve streaming and queuing capabilities.
• Provide standardized capabilities for logging, tracing, and telemetry
• Engage directly with internal engineering teams to understand pain points
• Iteratively improve the platform’s capabilities.
• Treat internal engineering teams as customers.
• Define success metrics for platform adoption, performance, and satisfaction.
• Participate in roadmap planning and prioritization.
• Identify opportunities to simplify, standardize, and accelerate software delivery.
• Design for reusability and apply deep understating of software design patterns to build highly reusable, extensible, and maintainable platform components.
• Proactively engage with engineering teams to understand challenges and friction points.
• Enable platform adoption through effective documentation and training sessions.
• Implement Test-Driven Development (TDD) and build robust automated test suites for all framework components including performance testing.
• Define key success metrics for platform adoption, performance, and user satisfaction.
• Identify opportunities to simplify, standardize, and accelerate the SDLC.
• Provide mentorship to engineering teams integrating and utilizing the platform.
• Actively engage with teams to diagnose and resolve issues they encounter.
  
  

• 6+ years of experience building Java/Spring Boot microservices.
• Proven expertise in designing and delivering platform capabilities.
• Deep understanding of API design through all phases of its lifecycle.
• Hands-on experience with event-driven architecture and batch processing.
• Familiarity with AWS cloud services relevant for backend platform development.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively with DevOps and SRE teams.
• Experience instrumenting services with robust observability and telemetry using tools such as Dynatrace.
• Proficiency with dependency management tools such as Gradle and CI/CD pipelines for shared components, including automated publishing to internal artifact repositories.
• Strong understating of versioning strategies for shared libraries and managing backward compatibility.
• Excellent Communication and Presentation Skills. Demonstrated ability to clearly articulate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences, both verbally and in written form (e.g., presentations, technical documentation).
  
  

• Working knowledge of Node.js / React to support full-stack platform features.
• Certifications such as AWS Solutions Architect or Spring Professional.
• Prior experience in a platform team, developer advocacy or internal consulting.
• Familiarity with empowering developers through self-service.
• Experience with static analysis tools and code quality metrics to ensure high standards in reusable codebases.