Principal SW Engineer - AI Native

Principal Full Stack Engineer (AI-Native) Canada | Founding Engineering Team

The Opportunity: We’re partnering with a publicly listed global technology company operating at a massive international scale across digital commerce. Despite its size, the organization runs with a startup execution model - lean teams, strong ownership, and engineering-led decision making. The company is now establishing a new Toronto engineering hub, starting with a small group of highly senior engineers tasked with designing and operating modern, AI-native systems that directly power a global customer platform used across 50+ countries.

This is a founding-team opportunity - not incremental hiring. At the Principal level, this role will help define system architecture, technical standards, and engineering practices that shape the long-term foundation of the Toronto development center.

What Makes This Role Different:
This team is intentionally structured around AI-augmented software development. AI tooling is not experimental or optional - it is embedded into daily workflows to dramatically increase engineering velocity, ownership, and output quality.

You’ll work in an environment where engineers:
● Own problems end-to-end
● Lead technical direction through hands-on contribution
● Operate production systems directly
● Use AI as a true productivity multiplier

What You’ll Be Building:
You’ll architect and deliver full-stack platforms powering a globally scaled commerce ecosystem, including:
● Modern frontend applications and platform experiences
● Scalable backend services and APIs
● Cloud-native infrastructure and distributed systems
● Performance, reliability, and observability platforms
● AI-enabled engineering workflows and development standards Principal Engineers are expected to drive initiatives from architecture → execution → long-term operational ownership while enabling team-wide engineering effectiveness.

Core Responsibilities:
● Architect and evolve scalable full-stack systems across frontend, backend, and cloud layers
● Lead high-impact technical initiatives from concept through production deployment
● Define and promote AI-assisted development standards and workflows
● Mentor engineers on system design, scalability, and architectural decision making
● Guide technical direction across services, applications, and platform components
● Improve system reliability, performance, and security at scale
● Partner closely with product, infrastructure, and platform leadership
● Lead root-cause analysis and resolution of complex production challenges
● Establish best practices for testing, observability, and deployment
● Continuously improve engineering productivity within a small, senior team Ideal Background:

We’re looking for senior technical leaders who combine deep hands-on engineering expertise with strong architectural ownership.

You likely bring:
● ~10+ years building production software systems
● Proven experience designing and delivering large-scale web platforms
● Expert JavaScript / TypeScript proficiency
● Strong backend experience across modern service architectures
● Deep understanding of APIs, distributed systems, and frontend architecture
● Extensive cloud-native development experience (AWS preferred)
● Experience working with data storage, caching, and messaging systems
● Track record of leading technical direction through hands-on execution
● Comfort operating in small, high-ownership engineering teams

Most importantly: Demonstrated ability to leverage AI tooling effectively to accelerate engineering velocity and improve system quality. Why Engineers Are Interested:
● Founding technical leader within a new Toronto engineering center
● High autonomy and meaningful architectural ownership
● Small, senior-only team environment
● Opportunity to shape AI-native engineering culture from day one
● Global scale technical challenges without large-company bureaucracy
● Competitive compensation and long-term growth opportunity