Principal Software Engineer
This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Principal Software Engineer based in Canada.
You will join a high-impact engineering environment where technical leadership directly shapes the scalability, reliability, and performance of large-scale educational platforms used across North America. The role is fully remote within Canada and operates across multiple engineering teams rather than within a single squad. You will act as a senior technical force multiplier, influencing architecture, system design, and engineering practices at scale. The work involves solving complex, cross-cutting challenges that impact product delivery, platform stability, and developer efficiency. You will collaborate closely with engineering managers, product leaders, and DevOps specialists to drive technical excellence. This is a hands-on leadership role where deep engineering expertise is combined with strategic influence.
Accountabilities:
- Provide hands-on technical leadership across multiple engineering teams, driving high-impact and high-priority initiatives that span systems and domains
- Unblock complex architectural and technical challenges, ensuring smooth delivery across interconnected services and platforms
- Lead system design and architecture decisions with a focus on scalability, maintainability, performance, and simplicity
- Conduct in-depth code reviews and enforce high engineering standards across quality, reliability, and efficiency
- Define and promote engineering best practices, including design patterns, tooling, and development workflows
- Collaborate closely with engineering managers and technical leads to support delivery without direct people management responsibilities
- Contribute directly to critical codebases when required, especially in high-risk or high-visibility areas
- Mentor senior engineers and tech leads through coaching, design discussions, and technical knowledge sharing
- Improve engineering effectiveness across teams, including CI/CD pipelines, system reliability, and development velocity
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent practical experience
- 15+ years of experience building and scaling full-stack applications in production environments
- Proven experience operating at staff or principal engineer level with cross-team technical influence
- Strong expertise in Node.js and TypeScript, with additional experience across multiple programming languages
- Solid experience with React and modern front-end architecture patterns
- Deep understanding of distributed systems, system design, and API architecture
- Experience working on large-scale, production-grade, cloud-native systems
- Strong background in CI/CD, DevOps practices, testing strategies, and software delivery pipelines
- Familiarity with AWS, Docker, Linux, and modern cloud infrastructure
- Strong SQL and relational database design skills
- Ability to solve ambiguous, complex, cross-functional engineering problems
- Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence without authority
- Pragmatic engineering mindset focused on delivering value and avoiding overengineering
- Legally eligible to work in Canada or the United States
- Competitive salary range: CAD 180,000 to 220,000 depending on experience
- Annual performance bonus
- Fully remote work across Canada
- Comprehensive benefits package including healthcare coverage
- Opportunity to work on large-scale, high-impact educational technology systems
- Strong engineering culture focused on quality, scalability, and continuous improvement
- Collaborative and flexible remote-first environment
- Professional growth through technical leadership and cross-team influence
Requirements:
Benefits: