Principal Software Developer – System Architecture Leadership

Job Description

Principal Software Developer | Lightspeed HQ

The Tone:
This is a full-time role at Lightspeed HQ, located in Canada/USA with options for fully remote, partially remote, or fully office-based work, operating within EST/EDT hours. Lightspeed builds a cloud commerce platform that helps retail, hospitality, and golf businesses simplify, scale, and provide exceptional customer experiences. As a Principal Software Developer, you will be crucial in guiding the design and architecture of critical system components for the flagship Lightspeed Retail product, directly contributing to innovative solutions and elevating engineering standards across the organization.

The TL;DR
• Role: Full Time
• Location: Remote, USA/Canada
• Mission: Guide the design and architecture of critical system components for the Lightspeed Retail product, ensuring scalability and performance while enhancing development practices and engineering craft.
• Tech Stack: Go, PHP, Java, RoR, Python

What You’ll Actually Do
• Design: Guide the design and architecture of critical system components for the Lightspeed Retail product to ensure scalability.
• Analyze: Analyze existing systems and infrastructure, identifying opportunities to improve architecture, reduce duplication, and enhance performance and robustness.
• Improve: Drive improvements in systems reliability, performance, and development practices, including design reviews, testing, deployment, and incident management.
• Mentor: Conduct architectural deep-dives and mentor key members across all service teams to build towards a sustainable architecture.
• Contribute: Personally contribute to key parts of the systems to deliver innovative solutions and support the development of a high-performance engineering culture within the Retail organization.

The Must-Haves
• Background: Senior-level professional with extensive software development experience, specializing in technical leadership and architectural management across multiple engineering teams.
• Experience: 15+ years of professional experience in software development, 5+ years as a technical leader for multiple teams, and 2+ years managing architecture across multiple teams with 35+ engineers. History of developing business-critical systems at scale to run on the cloud and delivering key outcomes under challenging timelines.
• Skills: Experience in more than one technology stack (Go, PHP, Java, RoR, Python), outstanding written and verbal communication, ability to moderate technical conversations, handle diverse opinions, and make quick decisions.
• Bonus: Expertise in distributed systems and building multi-region systems for the cloud, deep expertise in domain-driven software development, ability to lead and guide a team of engineers while contributing alongside them, Retail or Ecommerce domain experience, experience with people management responsibilities.