Founding Engineer (Platform)

Terminal (YC S23); Toronto; On-site; CAD 85,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

A fast-growing startup in Toronto seeks a data platform engineer to design and optimize scalable platforms. This role involves managing data streaming and storage, working with advanced architectures and programming in Java and Node.js. Successful candidates will have experience in platform engineering, data workflows, and strong problem-solving skills, with an emphasis on collaboration.

Benefits

Strong compensation and equity packages

Brand new MacBook and computer equipment

Top-tier health/dental benefits and flexible healthcare spending account

Personal spending account for professional development and wellness

Four weeks paid time off plus statutory holidays

In-person culture with an office in downtown Toronto

Qualifications

• 3+ years of experience in platform engineering or data engineering.
• 2+ years in designing and optimizing data pipelines at TB to PB scale.
• Familiarity with lake-house architectures (Iceberg, Delta, Hudi, Snowflake) and real-time data processing.

Responsibilities

• Own projects enhancing data replication, storage, enrichment, and reporting capabilities.
• Build and optimize data pipelines supporting core product and API.
• Shape architectural decisions to ensure scalability and reliability.

Skills

Data workflows

System design

Problem-solving

Collaboration

Tools

Kafka

Java

Node.js

AWS Lambda

AWS Step Functions

GitHub Actions

Job description

Terminal is Plaid for Telematics in commercial trucking. Companies building the next generation of insurance products, financial services and fleet software for trucking use our Universal API to access GPS data, speeding data and vehicle stats.

We are a fast-growing, venture-backed startup supported by top investors including Y Combinator, Golden Ventures and Wayfinder Ventures. Our exceptionally talented team is based in Toronto, Canada.

For more info, check out our website : https : / / withterminal.com

Note : This role is only available to Toronto / GTA-based candidates

About the role

We’re looking for an engineer who thrives on building scalable data platforms and enjoys tackling complex backend challenges. This isn’t just a data engineering role—you’ll be designing and optimizing the data platform that powers Terminal’s API, managing everything from data streaming and storage to analytics features at terabyte scale and beyond.

You should be comfortable navigating both data and backend engineering, with a solid foundation in software development. You’ll work with advanced data architectures, including Iceberg, Flink, and Kafka, tackling large-scale challenges and contributing to core product development using Java and Node.js. If you’re excited by the opportunity to shape a high-impact platform and tackle diverse engineering problems, we’d love to hear from you.

What you will do :

• Own projects aimed at enhancing data replication, storage, enrichment, and reporting capabilities.
• Build and optimize efficient streaming and batch data pipelines that support our core product and API.
• Design scalable storage solutions for handling terabytes of IoT and time-series data.
• Develop and maintain real-time data systems to ingest growing data volumes.
• Implement distributed tracing and observability patterns to improve monitoring and troubleshooting.
• Write clean, maintainable code in Java and Node.js for various platform components.
• Shape architectural decisions to ensure scalability and reliability throughout the data platform.

The ideal candidate will have :

• 3+ years of experience in platform engineering or data engineering.
• 2+ years of experience designing and optimizing data pipelines at TB to PB scale.
• Strong system design skills with a focus on data workflows.
• Familiarity with lake-house architectures (e.g., Iceberg, Delta, Hudi, Snowflake).
• Experience with real-time data processing tools like Kafka, Spark and Flink.
• Knowledge of distributed systems and large-scale data challenges.
• Proficient in Java, with a focus on clean, maintainable code.
• Strong problem-solving skills and a collaborative mindset.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) : SST, AWS CDK

Compute and Orchestration : AWS Lambda, AWS Step Functions

• Messaging and Events : Amazon SQS, Amazon EventBridge
• CI / CD : GitHub Actions
• Strong compensation and equity packages
• Brand new MacBook and computer equipment
• Top-tier health / dental benefits and a flexible healthcare spending account
• Personal spending account for professional development, fitness and wellness
• Four weeks paid time off + statutory holidays
• In-person culture with an office located in downtown Toronto