Principal Software Engineer - Payables
$191,000–$249,000 year
On-siteWaterloo, Ontario, Canada
Job Summary
Design, build, review, and operate Payables systems while leading by example during executive-attention incidents and critical deliveries regardless of time. Own the architecture roadmap, write ADRs to enterprise standards, and participate in the Architecture Review Board to ensure cross-workstream decisions are ratified and communicated. Set the observability bar by engineering instrumentation, telemetry, and SLOs from the first line of code, and define how AI agents integrate across the full lifecycle from discovery to operations. Drive engineering maturity by mentoring Staff and Senior engineers, raising quality and reliability standards, and translating Innovation Studio practices into operational reality. Partner with product and leadership to own area-scale OKRs, KPIs, and technical investment cases that align with business outcomes.
Required Qualifications
- Roughly 15–20+ years of relevant engineering experience
- Experience in at least one of these areas: Payments or Banking domain
- Hands-on credibility and strong work ethic
- Comfort and credibility leading in the area's highest-stakes moments
- A track record owning technical direction for a multi-team organization with real business outcomes
- Track record of owning area-scale customer and business outcomes
- Product, business, and stakeholder fluency at the level required to partner with executive product leadership
- Architecture leadership evidenced in writing — roadmaps, ADRs, and standards organizations built against
- Experience participating in an Architecture Review Board (or equivalent cross-workstream architecture decision forum) and adopting a standardized ADR practice across a workstream
- Track record of setting the observability and reliability bar for a multi-team organization
- Demonstrated leadership of AI-native transformation — agentic workflows adopted by teams
- A record of growing engineers at every level
- Security and regulatory fluency for financial platforms
- Exceptional written and executive communication
Desired Qualifications
- Experience in the Payments or Banking domain
- Experience improving engineering processes and team effectiveness at scale
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
- Advanced degree in a relevant technical discipline (e.g. Master's or PhD)
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