Principal Distributed Systems Engineer

fabric; Vancouver; On-site; CAD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

fabric is seeking a Principal Distributed Systems Engineer to take a crucial role in designing and scaling its data platform, driving the Agentic AI platform for commerce. This position demands extensive experience in building distributed systems and offers a competitive salary within the CAD $150K to $200K range, along with a collaborative work environment and growth opportunities.

Benefits

Competitive compensation packages

PTO and Holiday plans

Medical, Dental, Life, and Vision benefits

Wellness & Technology Programs

Retirement Savings Plan

Fast-paced, fun and collaborative environment

Qualifications

• 10+ years of hands-on experience building distributed data systems.
• Proven ability to build data infrastructure from the ground up.
• Deep expertise in modern data architectures including ETL/ELT pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Design & build a scalable data platform using industry best practices.
• Guide data strategy and architecture in partnership with CPTO.
• Champion data governance, security, and high availability.

Skills

Distributed data systems

Cloud-native experience

Data governance

Collaboration

Tools

AWS

S3

Redshift

Glue

SageMaker

Clickhouse

Job description

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Who we are:

We are a brilliant team making our history to evolve the commerce industry. fabric is the next-generation commerce platform that is designed to provide the commerce services customers expect so they can build world-class experiences, anywhere.

Who we are:

We are a brilliant team making our history to evolve the commerce industry. fabric is the next-generation commerce platform that is designed to provide the commerce services customers expect so they can build world-class experiences, anywhere.

fabric is on a mission to revolutionize commerce for everyone, and we empower businesses that are striving to deliver commerce that drives conversion and customer outcomes. Leading retailers, including Chico’s, Brooklinen, and Ashley’s Furniture, trust fabric to run their modern commerce business. Headquartered in San Francisco, fabric was founded in 2017 by a group of industry veterans determined to bring the same technical principles found at Amazon to retail.

No matter what field you are in, fabric has exciting opportunities for people passionate about making a difference and skilled at what they do!

Here are four questions you should ask yourself:

• Do I believe in fabric's mission?
• Am I eager to build cool things?
• Am I excited to collaborate with brilliant people?
• Am I motivated to disrupt e-commerce?
  
  

If the answer is yes, we want to talk to you!

Where we hire:

Canada (Toronto & Vancouver)

Your next career:

At fabric, we’re building the future of agentic commerce. As a Principal Distributed Systems Engineer , you’ll play a foundational role in designing and scaling the data platform that powers fabric’s Agentic AI platform for commerce.

Your Responsibilities:

• Design & Build: Architect a modern, scalable, and cost-effective data platform using industry best practices.
• Lead with Vision: Guide data strategy and architecture in partnership with the CPTO and engineering leaders - aligning infrastructure investments with long-term business and product goals
• Accelerate Product Development: Collaborate with Product Managers and SDEs to launch data-intensive features and products.
• Ensure Quality & Compliance: Champion data governance, security, and high availability across all data systems.
• Mentor & Influence: Set the bar for technical excellence across engineering, sharing best practices and fostering continuous learning.
  
  

What you bring to the table:

• 10+ years of hands-on experience building distributed data systems, backend services and core infrastructure in high-growth or startup environments.
• Proven ability to build data infrastructure from the ground up (0→1) and scale systems to support complex, high-throughput workloads across across OLTP, OLAP and AI/ ML use cases
• Deep expertise in modern data architectures including ETL/ELT pipelines, Data Lakes, Warehouses, Catalogs, and Real-time Streaming.
• Cloud-native experience (AWS), including services like S3, Redshift, Glue, SageMaker, and Bedrock. Bonus for experience with Clickhouse, Airbyte, Rudderstack, Airflow, Metabase & Posthog.
• Track record of shipping production-grade data products that drive business or product impact.
• Strategic mindset with the ability to influence technical direction, guide engineering best practices, and align data work to business outcomes.
• Strong collaborator with a bias for action—equally comfortable architecting, coding, and debugging alongside engineers as advising leadership on platform evolution.
  
  

The base salary for this role will be between CAD $150K to $200K.

The annual base salary range for this full-time position reflects the minimum and maximum target salaries for the position across all Canada locations. Actual pay may vary, depending on qualifications, experience and location. In addition, this role may be eligible for an annual performance bonus, equity options, and company benefits (your recruiter can share more details during the hiring process). Final offer amounts may vary from the amounts listed above.

What we bring to the table:

• Competitive compensation packages
• PTO and Holiday plans
• Benefits packages which include Medical, Dental, Life, and Vision
• Wellness & Technology Programs
• Retirement Savings Plan
• Fast-paced, fun and collaborative environment
• A team invested in you both personally and professionally
  
  

Seniority level

• Seniority level

  Mid-Senior level

Employment type

• Employment type

  Full-time

Job function

• Job function

  Information Technology

• Industries

  Software Development

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