Principal Engineer

TL;DR

Principal Engineer (Architecture): Shape and evolve hirify.global’s platform architecture, defining standards and delivering scalable distributed services with an accent on scalability, performance, resilience, and cost trade-offs. Focus on hands-on technical delivery, guiding complex decisions across engineering teams, and producing architecture artefacts and governance for multi-service systems.

Location: Remote (Canada within Central or Eastern time zones)

Company

hirify.global builds fare payment and mobile ticketing platforms for public transport used across hundreds of locations globally.

What you will do

• Define and evolve platform architecture, including blueprint, standards, and best practices.
• Design and deliver scalable, robust, cost-efficient services aligned with the platform blueprint.
• Stay hands-on with code and technical delivery, including reviews and targeted contributions.
• Resolve complex platform challenges across scalability, performance, resilience, and cost.
• Advise engineering teams on technical decisions and ensure architecture standards are followed.
• Support roadmap planning, RFP estimation/scoping, and create high-quality technical documentation and architecture artefacts.

Requirements

• Strong experience designing and evolving distributed systems and microservices architectures.
• Operated at Principal or Staff level, shaping technical direction across multiple teams or domains.
• Comfort staying hands-on in code, design, and delivery when needed.
• Strong cloud experience (AWS preferred) and modern infrastructure practices.
• Proven data architecture experience (data platforms, pipelines, warehousing, or data lakes).
• Experience with REST API design in complex multi-service environments and familiarity with event-driven architectures (e.g., Kafka, schema governance).

Nice to have

• Interest in or exposure to AI-enabled systems and understanding architectural implications in production.
• Experience with monolith-to-microservices decomposition.
• Experience improving cloud cost and system efficiency at scale.
• Familiarity with Kotlin, Java, DynamoDB, MySQL, Terraform, and GitLab CI/CD.

Culture & Benefits

• 20 vacation days per year plus office closure between Christmas and New Year (28+ days total).
• Private healthcare and life insurance.
• Training allowance up to CAD$1300 per year and CAD$325 per year for a home office setup.
• Up to $50 CAD per month for team building activities and enhanced family leave.
• Ability to work for up to 3 months per year from any country in the world.

Hiring process

• Interviews focused on architecture leadership, hands-on technical depth, and decision-making in complex distributed systems.
• Discussion of how you approach ambiguity, trade-offs, and cross-team technical influence.