Who you are

• Has 10+ years of software engineering experience, including 3+ years of experience in a senior technical leadership role (Principal or Staff level)
• Has experience working in a Principal Engineer or Architect role
• Has proven ability in architecting and delivering cloud-native solutions at scale, as well as rapidly prototyping ideas to validate new opportunities quickly
• Has demonstrated strategic architectural ownership, defining high-level technical vision and standards using a shared code and infrastructure model, while delegating detailed implementation to Staff Engineers
• Has a track record of translating strategic business goals into actionable engineering roadmaps, aligning technical solutions with clear business outcomes
• Has expert-level knowledge of relational and non-relational database technologies such as PostgreSQL, Redis, Elasticsearch, and DynamoDB
• Has strong customer and stakeholder empathy, actively engaging users to deeply understand their experiences, needs, and concerns
• Takes a hands-on approach to continuous learning and knowledge-sharing, regularly researching trends, competitor technologies, and effectively communicating insights internally and externally
• Has clear, collaborative communication skills, able to influence senior leadership, mentor engineers, and build an engineering culture centred around responsible, innovative solutions
• Loves to learn and grow. They’ve found (and keep looking for) ways to level up their skills in this field, whether that’s through formal education, gaining professional experience, or maybe even building their own business
• Experience with modern Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) tooling, including large language models, fine-tuning techniques, retrieval-augmented generation, vector databases, and AI-assisted coding tools (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code, Windsurf)
• Expert-level knowledge of one or more web frameworks
• Business analysis and requirements gathering experience
• Experience conducting technical product research or analyzing competitor technologies
• Experience with backend languages such as Ruby, Go (Golang), or Node.js, or frontend technologies such as React, TypeScript, GraphQL, HTML, and CSS

What the job involves

• As a Principal Software Engineer at Thinkific, you’ll act as a force multiplier, elevating our engineering team by aligning diverse perspectives across all teams and business lines into a cohesive technical strategy
• You’ll bridge business and technology, owning end-to-end system architecture and influencing developer productivity tools alongside platform and infrastructure needs
• Your work will ensure that our systems evolve sustainably, balancing performance, reliability, and cost efficiency to deliver value for our customers and our business
• Reporting to our VP, Engineering, you’ll collaborate closely with R&D leadership, including fellow Principal Engineers, and work cross-functionally with teams across Thinkific to make that vision a reality
• Your goal will be to drive the technical evolution of Thinkific’s end-to-end systems to enable scalable, reliable, and cost-efficient product growth
• Own the strategic evolution of the product from a technical perspective — your objective is to ensure business success and impact through technical decisions and implementations
• Own overall architecture and technical vision for the product
• Partner with the R&D Leadership to stay updated on business strategy and pair with them on ownership of the domains, the principals from the technical perspective and the directors from the strategic & organizational perspective
• Collaborate closely with R&D leadership at all levels (including fellow Principal Engineers), leveraging your expertise to co-develop the technical roadmap and transform strategic opportunities into manageable engineering tasks
• Partner with Platform Engineering, SRE and Security teams to define standards for infrastructure, reliability and cost efficiency to ensure sustainable system growth
• Lead by example and grow the technical excellence of our teams, providing strategic guidance and oversight to Senior, Staff and other Principal engineers. Collaborate on prioritization of work, implementation details, technical stack decisions, and overall health of systems and features, ensuring alignment with higher-level technical strategy and guiding principles
• Oversee the end-to-end architecture of our systems, from developer workflows, build systems and tooling through production infrastructure, ensuring stability, scalability and security across the stack
• Be responsible for writing and reviewing technical documentation across business and technical domains, and sponsor other engineers to maintain, add, and update as well
• Review technical proposals for other engineers and help them level up by mentoring them and helping them solve complex problems
• Own SaaS metrics relating to Thinkific systems (like COGs), and be accountable for the overall costs, reliability, and scalability of the domains in relation to business value
• Maintain visibility outside of the organization, regularly contributing to the engineering blog, giving talks at conferences, and overall influencing engineering culture inside & outside the organization
• Play an active role in our hiring process to help us continue to scale our Engineering team, from suggesting skills gaps, to interviewing candidates, to conducting assignment reviews
• Participate in on-call rotations as required, troubleshooting production issues to maintain the reliability of our products and rapidly addressing critical production issues
• Regularly engage with customers, technology vendors, and the broader community, proactively maintaining up-to-date knowledge to position Thinkific effectively in the rapidly evolving AI landscape

Benefits

• Open vacation policy: We're big proponents of sand, sun, and taking time to recharge. As long as you're getting your work done and keeping your team supported, take vacation when you need it. We encourage Thinkers to take at least 4 weeks vacation each year
• Flexible work environments: Whether you’re working from Thinkific HQ or working from home, set your own hours to find a rhythm that works for you and your team. Finding the time for workouts, laundry, daycare dropoffs, or appointments is easier than ever.
• Learning opportunities and personal development: Interested in a course, conference, or career coaching? We’ve got you covered with our $1500 Learn and Grow fund to support your personal and professional growth, on top of regular lunch & learns, internal courses and workshops, and a coaching program. Our people leaders will work with you to ensure you’re taking advantage of the learning opportunities you want and need
• Competitive benefits package: Our benefits kick in on your first day at Thinkific and include coverage for health, vision, dental, prescriptions, and up to $3000 for your mental health. Our Employee and Family Assistance Program will also take care of you and your family, providing everything to support your well-being
• Parental leave: We care about helping you grow your career AND your family. Family is important to us, and our paid parental leave gives you a little extra help while you're beginning this new adventure. Learn more about our family leave benefits here
• We actually hang out: Thinkers are some of the kindest (and most fun!) people out there. We're into boat parties, hackathons, company retreats, and celebrating everything from Canada Day to Brazilian Carnival. Wherever you’re based, you’ll have opportunities to connect with your team both virtually and IRL
• The bow-wow benefits: Office dogs. Plural. Meet them on Instagram at @dogsofthinkific