Title: IT Principal Engineer - Retail POS & Pharmacy Systems
About Us
Sigma Healthcare is proudly powering pharmacy! We have the largest pharmacy network in Australia with trusted brands including Chemist Warehouse, Amcal and Discount Drug Stores. We are powered by our dedicated people and our leading Australian full line pharmacy wholesale and distribution business that delivers medicines to any pharmacy anywhere in Australia. With Chemist Warehouse now operating in four countries outside Australia, we continue to expand our reach.
About The Role
This IT Principal Engineer position is the senior technical leader within the Retail POS and Pharmacy Dispensing Systems team, reporting to the IT Development Manager . The role provides technical direction, technical leadership, and engineering quality oversight across mission critical in store platforms, while partnering closely with the head of department on delivery, prioritisation and capability uplift.
This role is central to modernising legacy platforms and aligning store systems with the organisation's cloud, online, and composable technology strategy.
Role Responsibilities
- Define and champion engineering best practices, architectural patterns, and coding standards across POS, dispensing, and in-store systems.
- Provide domain-level technical leadership, ensuring seamless integration between in-store platforms and eCommerce, mobile, OMS, loyalty, payments, and enterprise systems.
- Lead legacy-to-modern platform transformations using event-driven, API-first, and composable architecture approaches.
- Design and enhance highly resilient, offline-first store systems, including device management, synchronisation and network failover capabilities.
- Provide hands-on leadership for complex and business-critical initiatives, guiding architectural decisions and unblocking teams.
- Define and uphold API and integration standards across retail POS and dispensing platforms, including versioning, telemetry and operational visibility.
- Design and implement secure systems, embedding modern security practices, threat modelling, and compliance with PCI DSS and data protection requirements.
- Champion DevOps and automation, including CI/CD, infrastructure as code, automated testing, and improved deployment processes.
- Establish strong observability and reliability practices across store and cloud platforms, including monitoring, logging, and continuous improvement through incident reviews.
- Mentor and uplift engineering capability, fostering a culture of technical excellence, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
About You
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or a related discipline.
- Extensive experience (8+ years) in senior or principal-level engineering roles within complex enterprise environments.
- Proven experience working within the healthcare or pharmacy domain is highly regarded.
- Strong expertise in Windows-based application development, including WinForms (DevExpress), ASP.NET (C#), and deployment/packaging (MSI).
- Solid experience with Microsoft SQL Server (including SQL Express) and data-driven application design.
- Hands-on experience building distributed systems using Windows Services and queue/event-driven architectures.
- Experience designing and managing APIs using platforms such as Azure API Management or Apigee.
- Demonstrated experience working across cloud environments (Azure and other public cloud platforms), including CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions) and containerisation.
- Excellent collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively across engineering, architecture, security, and product teams.
- Clear and confident communication skills, with the ability to translate complex technical concepts for diverse audiences.
- Passion for mentoring and developing others, with a track record of uplifting team capability through coaching and knowledge sharing.
Benefits
- Career growth and development opportunities
- Discounts across all Chemist Warehouse Retail group brands
- Access to ongoing training and professional development
- Free flu vaccinations
- Access to EAP and support service
- Subsided café on-site