Our client is seeking a Principal Full Stack Engineer on a contract basis to provide technical leadership and hands-on engineering across the design and delivery of scalable APIs, modern web applications, and cloud-native platforms.
This is a senior technical leadership role for an engineer who can operate at both the architecture and implementation level - setting technical direction, making key design decisions, establishing engineering standards, and solving complex technical challenges while remaining actively involved in development.
Duration: 12 months
Location: 4d/week hybrid Markham
Responsibilities
- Provide hands-on technical leadership and architectural direction for complex, enterprise-scale applications and platforms.
- Define solution architecture, engineering patterns, technical standards, and development best practices across the application landscape.
- Design and build highly scalable APIs and full-stack applications using React, NestJS/Node.js, Spring Boot, and modern cloud technologies.
- Lead the design of event-driven architectures, microservices, integration patterns, and distributed systems.
- Evaluate architectural options, identify technical trade-offs, and provide clear recommendations to engineering and business stakeholders.
- Drive cloud-native architecture and deployment using Azure Container Apps, Azure API Management (APIM), Docker, and related Azure services.
- Establish and improve CI/CD practices using Azure DevOps, including branching strategies, automated deployments, release management, and production controls.
- Define and implement Infrastructure as Code using Bicep, Terraform, ARM Templates, Pulumi, or similar technologies.
- Provide technical direction for relational and NoSQL database architecture, performance, scalability, and integration.
- Lead complex technical design reviews and provide guidance to senior engineers and development teams.
- Establish engineering standards for scalability, security, reliability, maintainability, observability, and performance.
- Define observability strategies using Azure monitoring, logging, distributed tracing, telemetry, dashboards, and alerting.
- Drive modern deployment practices including feature flags, incremental releases, automated testing, and progressive delivery.
- Lead planning for production deployments, complex releases, technical migrations, and remediation initiatives.
- Troubleshoot and lead resolution of complex architectural, performance, integration, and production issues.
- Identify technical debt and establish pragmatic strategies for modernization and continuous improvement.
- Mentor engineers, elevate engineering practices, and provide technical guidance across multiple teams and initiatives.
- Partner with product, architecture, security, infrastructure, and business stakeholders to translate business requirements into scalable technical solutions.
- Maintain strong ownership of technical outcomes while balancing delivery timelines, engineering quality, risk, and evolving business priorities.
Requirements
- 12+ years of software engineering experience, with extensive experience designing and building scalable APIs, distributed applications, and enterprise platforms.
- 10+ years of modern web application development experience, including strong hands-on expertise with React and Node.js frameworks; NestJS strongly preferred.
- Proven experience operating as a Principal Engineer, Lead Engineer, Staff Engineer, Architect, or equivalent technical leadership role.
- Strong hands-on experience designing and developing scalable Spring Boot APIs.
- Deep expertise in event-driven architecture, microservices, distributed systems, API design, and enterprise integration patterns.
- Demonstrated experience defining application architecture and making technical decisions across complex, large-scale systems.
- Hands-on experience with Azure Container Apps, Azure API Management (APIM), Docker, Azure DevOps CI/CD, and related cloud-native technologies; comparable AWS experience may be considered.
- Strong Infrastructure as Code experience using Bicep, Terraform, ARM Templates, Pulumi, or equivalent technologies.
- Strong knowledge of SQL and NoSQL database technologies, including data modelling, scalability, and performance considerations.
- Experience defining and managing branching strategies, code merges, release processes, deployment strategies, and production releases.
- Strong understanding of application security, resiliency, scalability, observability, performance, and production-readiness principles.
- Proven ability to evaluate multiple solution approaches, articulate technical trade-offs, and drive architectural decisions.
- Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to engineers, architects, product leaders, and senior business stakeholders.
- Demonstrated ability to mentor and influence senior engineers without relying on direct management authority.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with experience leading resolution of complex technical and production issues.
- Strong ownership mindset with a track record of delivering production-ready solutions in complex enterprise environments.
- Ability to balance architectural excellence with pragmatic, incremental delivery and changing business requirements.
Nice to Have
- Experience designing or developing discounting, pricing, promotions, or rules engines.
- Experience with TanStack within React applications.
- Experience producing architecture diagrams, technical design documents, ADRs, and solution-option analyses.
- Experience with Application Insights, Log Analytics, distributed tracing, dashboards, alerting, and telemetry-driven troubleshooting.
- Experience with Agile delivery tools including Azure DevOps (ADO) and JIRA.
- Experience leading modernization, technical debt remediation, platform transformation, or large-scale application migration initiatives.
- Experience establishing engineering standards and development practices across multiple teams.
- Experience with secure AI-assisted software development tools and associated security and governance considerations.
- Strong technical leadership, planning, organization, communication, and presentation skills.
- Demonstrated ability to balance speed of delivery, engineering excellence, architectural trade-offs, risk, and competing priorities.
