Principal Software Developer

Lightspeed
Ottawa, ON, CanadaPosted 11 February 2026

Job Description

<p><strong>Hi there! Thanks for stopping by 👋</strong></p> <p>Are you actively looking for a new opportunity? Or just checking the market? Well… you might just be in the right place!</p> <p>As a hands-on Principal Software Developer, you’ll guide design and architecture of the critical system components of the flagship Lightspeed Retail product used by thousands of merchants around the world. You will personally contribute to the key parts of the systems to deliver innovative solutions that meet customer needs. You will uplevel engineering craft across the organization, by providing technical guidance, promoting best practices, mentoring fellow engineers, while empowering the teams to build towards a sustainable architecture. </p> <h2><strong>What you'll be responsible for</strong></h2> <ul> <li>Ensuring that systems built to support new initiatives are well designed and scalable.</li> <li>Analyzing existing systems and infrastructure landscape, identifying opportunities to improve architecture, reduce duplication, make systems more performant and robust.</li> <li>Identifying key recurring patterns leading to incidents and non-project overhead, and coming up with a plan to address those</li> <li>Driving improvements in our systems reliability and performance.</li> <li>Improving development practices, from design reviews, to testing and deployment, and to incident management</li> <li>You conduct architectural deep-dives and mentor key members across all services teams.</li> <li>As a senior member of the engineering team, you will also play a key in developing a high-performance culture in the Retail organization.</li> <li>Contributing as part of the wider team to achieve organizational objectives even if this means doing things that aren’t strictly within the scope of your role.</li> </ul> <p><strong>What you’ll be bringing to the team</strong></p> <ul> <li>15+ years of professional experience in software development</li> <li>5+ years of experience as a technical leader for multiple teams</li> <li>2+ years of experience in managing architecture across multiple teams with more than 35+ engineers.</li> <li>History of developing business critical systems at scale, to run on the cloud.</li> <li>History of delivering key outcomes for the business, under challenging timelines.</li> <li>Experience in more than one technology stack such as Go, PHP, Java, RoR, Python, etc.</li> <li>Outstanding written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to convey ideas concisely.</li> <li>Ability to moderate technical conversations, handle diverse opinions, and make quick decisions.</li> </ul> <p> </p> <p><strong> Even better if you have, but not necessary</strong></p> <ul> <li>Expertise in distributed systems and building multi-region systems for the cloud</li> <li>Deep expertise in domain-driven software development</li> <li>Ability to lead and guide a team of engineers while contributing alongside them</li> <li>Retail or Ecommerce domain experience</li> <li>Experience with people management responsibilities</li> </ul> <h2><strong>Who you are</strong></h2> <ul> <li>You have a passion for software development and a customer-focused mindset</li> <li>You are a team player who can work with, and help grow, other developers</li> <li>You understand the need for constant improvement, self-growth, and accountability</li> <li>You step up to lead features, solve problems, and research new technologies</li> <li>You set amb ... (truncated, view full listing at source)