Principal Software Engineer
Role details
Job location
Tech stack
Job description
You'll operate at the intersection of hands-on engineering and senior technical leadership - owning architectural direction, writing production code, and tackling the kinds of complex problems that require both depth and creativity. Equally important is your ability to lead: mentoring engineers, aligning teams, and setting the technical bar across a strong, full-stack engineering organization. A central part of this role is driving the company's push into AI - embedding intelligent capabilities into the product and modernizing how the engineering team itself works. If you're someone who already lives and breathes AI in your day-to-day and wants to bring that energy to a team that's genuinely committed to the transformation, this is worth a conversation.
What You'll Be Doing
- AI Integration: Contribute to the integration of AI capabilities within the core product - working with LLMs, RAG pipelines, and agentic workflows - while championing AI tooling adoption across the SDLC.
- Architecture & Execution: Lead system design and contribute hands-on code for large-scale, complex backend systems with full-stack fluency where needed.
- Domain Mastery: Build genuine depth across the product, the technical stack, and the broader AI ecosystem.
- Problem Ownership: Bring creative, pragmatic thinking to hard technical challenges with a clear focus on customer outcomes.
- Collaboration: Work closely with product, QA, and DevOps partners to drive alignment and move initiatives forward effectively.
- Technical Governance: Shape and review architectural decisions to ensure consistency, scalability, and future-readiness.
- Team Development: Give engineers clear, actionable technical feedback and actively raise the team's capability in modern AI engineering practices.
Requirements
- Experience: 12+ years in software engineering with confirmed Principal-level tenure - seasoned enough to add immediate value to a strong, experienced team.
- AI Mindset: AI is already embedded in your daily workflow - you use it to write code, investigate problems, generate tests, and accelerate delivery. You're a genuine advocate, not a sceptic.
- Languages: Strong in Python, Java, or TypeScript; comfortable navigating across all three over time.
- Frameworks: Experience across some combination of Vue, React, Flask, and Spring Boot. Full-stack fluency valued - deep backend with working frontend knowledge is the target profile.
- Cloud: AWS primary; GCP familiarity a plus.
- Databases: Comfortable across relational and NoSQL - MySQL, PostgreSQL, DynamoDB, Firestore. Vector database experience a plus.
- AI Delivery: Hands-on experience with LLMs, RAG, or agentic AI in production is a strong differentiator. LangChain, LlamaIndex, or similar orchestration frameworks a bonus.
- Product Shop Background: You've built and owned software in a product company - not an agency, consultancy, or pure freelance context. You understand what it means to be a true team member across engineering, product, and QA.
- Influence: The kind of engineer others seek out - trusted for technical judgement, clear in how you communicate it.
- Communication: Can translate complex technical concepts clearly for both engineering and non-technical audiences.
Benefits & conditions
- $180,000-$230,000 CAD
- Unlimited Vacation
- Excellent benefits inc. Medical/Dental/Vision