Principal Full Stack Engineer (AI-Native) Canada | Founding Engineering Team The Prospect: 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 current 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 prospect

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