Software Engineer - Central Engineering

Overview

Join to apply for the Software Engineer - Central Engineering role at Costco Wholesale .

Costco IT is responsible for the technical future of Costco Wholesale , the third largest retailer in the world with wholesale operations in fourteen countries. Costco is well known for its employee-centric culture, philanthropy, and community service. Costco IT is a dynamic, fast-paced environment, working through exciting transformation efforts to build the next generation retail environment.

Software Engineers perform development work across the technology stack (front-end and back-end). They are versatile in how they add value, managing projects that involve databases, backend services, or front-end applications, with a strong understanding of emerging technologies to support new solutions. They understand the full technology stack and underlying applications, services, and databases to ensure optimal performance.

Costco’s Central Engineering team is looking for a Software Engineer with a deep understanding of Costco’s core technology stack, operational processes, and business model. Primary responsibilities include automating software builds, test and deployment systems, and infrastructure, advancing technology in an agile environment, and delivering solutions that meet business objectives. This role will manage multiple development, test, staging, and demo environments, deploy and manage software into production with automation, and drive observability, logging, and documentation for operational transparency and maintainability.

Role summary: to be part of one of the worldwide BEST companies “to work for”.

Responsibilities

• Demonstrates expertise in release processes and code deployments across complex applications, and proactively resolves production issues to ensure smooth operations.
• Designs, builds, and maintains robust CI/CD pipelines to automate development, testing, and deployment workflows, including generating code quality metrics.
• Provides technical leadership and mentorship, offering strategic guidance, solution recommendations, training, and support for junior team members.
• Participates in agile scrum ceremonies and release processes, collaborating with Product Owner, Development, QA, and Operations to deliver scalable solutions and improve tooling.
• Drives automation across the software lifecycle, including configuring development/test environments, managing test data, and designing/implementing robust build, deployment, and testing systems.
• Enhances testing strategies and quality, utilizing TDD practices, creating/executing unit tests, and delivering DevSecOps automation to detect defects early.
• Drives executional excellence by monitoring builds, resolving infrastructure issues, and integrating tools for end-to-end traceability and performance optimization.
• Manages and optimizes cloud infrastructure and environments, leveraging diverse tools (e.g., Azure, GCP, Terraform, Jenkins, Git) for efficient product delivery and quality metrics.
• Develops the conceptual systems architecture design and supporting technologies needed to enable new or enhanced functionality within a product/application, emphasizing availability, reusability, interoperability and security.
• Develops and implements front-end architecture to support user interface concepts.
• Enhances technical proficiency across databases, distributed systems, UI/UX, quality assurance, and security.
• Drives engineering best practices and code quality, performing development and optimization, identifying deficiencies, and conducting peer code reviews.
• Drives cross-functional collaboration with Product Owners, Development, QA, and Operations to ensure scalable, maintainable solutions and define technical requirements.
• Designs, builds, debugs, optimizes and implements solutions in approved tool sets and databases.
• Performs high-quality software development and optimization activities, ensuring fault-tolerant, efficient, and secure solutions.
• Collaborates with team members to define project specifications and release documentation for all phases of the product development cycle.

Required

• 5+ years’ IT experience.
• 3+ years’ software development experience with Automation and Orchestration tooling/technology (Azure DevOps, Terraform, Jenkins, Git, etc.) and 1+ year of infrastructure experience.
• 1+ years supporting production systems or solutions.
• Experience supporting, maintaining and monitoring pipelines (real time & batch).
• Experience provisioning and managing cloud services required; GCP preferred.
• Solid understanding of development/coding methodologies.
• Significant use of orchestration tool sets, such as Kubernetes, Ansible, Docker.
• Strong scripting skills (Powershell, Bash, Python, etc.).
• Knowledge of Agile Methodologies (scrum, kanban).
• Must have high integrity, accountability, a positive attitude, and be willing to do what it takes to make the team successful.
• Must be extremely responsive, able to work under pressure in crisis with a strong sense of urgency.
• Responsible, conscientious, organized, self-motivated and able to work with limited supervision.
• Must be detail-oriented with strong problem-solving skills and ability to proactively analyze for potential future issues.
• Able to support off-hours work as required, including weekends, holidays, and 24/7.

Recommended

• Azure / Google Cloud Platform (GCP) certification.
• Experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
• Experience developing and operating end-to-end automated IT operations solutions (deployment, release management, monitoring, etc.).
• Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery experience.
• GitHub DevOps experience, including managing CI/CD workflows using GitHub Actions.
• Experience administering repository security and access controls.
• Experience with Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs), such as Backstage.io.
• Experience with APIs, web services, and API registration services like Azure API Management (APIM).
• Knowledge of Information Security best practices & principles (certificates, encryption, etc.).
• Proficient in Google Workspace applications (Sheets, Docs, Slides, Gmail).

Required Documents

• Cover Letter
• Resume

Costco is an equal opportunity employer. California applicants, please 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 RSU eligible)
• Level Staff - $180,000 - $225,000 (Bonus and RSU eligible)

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off, health benefits, disability and life insurance, and 401(k) with stock purchase options for eligible employees.