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, solid 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

📌 Principal SW Engineer - AI Native (Ontario)
🏢 hireVouch
📍 Ontario