Principal Software Engineer

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Canada.

📋 Description

• In the role of Principal Software Engineer for this group, you will act as the key support for the engineering leader and be a vital member of the organization’s leadership team.

• You will serve as the primary problem solver within the organization. This is not merely an architectural position; you will actively engage by coding alongside teams that face challenges, deliver complex solutions, and then proceed to the next task.

• You will share the responsibility for the Platform Architect role concerning the C1 Platform Foundation. This is a dynamic environment typical of a startup, where the technology we utilize evolves monthly, and you excel in adapting to shifting plans.

• You embody a 'show-me' mentality — your impact is measured by the code you produce, which is showcased during Friday demos just like your peers.

• You will tackle the most challenging issues within any team, making pivotal platform architecture decisions (event bus, plugin lifecycle, multi-tenancy, RBAC, schema registry) in collaboration with the engineering leader.

• Establish reference implementations that set the standard for others.

• Enhance the skills of the engineers around you — you elevate the entire team through your coding efforts, rather than through memos, by unblocking issues effectively.

⛳️ Requirements

• Over 12 years of hands-on experience, genuinely versatile — proficient in 7 or more programming languages throughout your career. Expertise in senior-level Go is essential; familiarity with Python and TypeScript is expected, and knowledge of a native/systems language is a significant advantage.

• Extensive experience across various technologies and industries — you have successfully delivered solutions in multiple sectors and adapted swiftly to different architectural paradigms.

• Profound knowledge of high-capacity distributed systems and their failure dynamics — including state management, race conditions, locking, contention, ordering, and back-pressure. You have debugging experience in production environments, not just theoretical knowledge.

• Familiarity with several messaging systems (NATS / Kafka / Redpanda / RabbitMQ-class) and various database types — such as relational, KV, document, columnar, and graph — with a clear understanding of their appropriate applications.

• Experience with at least two cloud platforms, with deep expertise in one; GCP is strongly preferred as the primary platform.

• Strong foundation in AI concepts — including LLMs, SLMs, RAG, knowledge graphs, agents, training/fine-tuning, and evaluation — along with practical experience in integrating AI into code: developing AI-driven features and utilizing AI-assisted development for accelerated progress.

• Masterful troubleshooting/debugging skills — recognized as the top debugger in your environment. You can interpret unfamiliar code, stack traces, or flame graphs with ease and know precisely where to place breakpoints without confusion.

• Quick problem-solving abilities and the capacity to mentor others as a force multiplier — you can instantly recognize patterns in distributed systems, real-time audio, browser internals, AI pipelines, and high-throughput data models.

• Prefer to operate flexibly rather than manage a squad. You wish to tackle the challenging 10% of tasks.

• Establish best practices by delivering reference implementations, rather than merely documenting processes.

🏝️ Benefits

• Competitive salary and performance-based bonuses.

• Comprehensive health benefits, including medical, dental, and vision coverage.

• Flexible working hours and a hybrid work model.

• Opportunities for professional development and continuous learning.

• A collaborative and innovative work environment.