Principal Engineer, Payments

VGS; Canada; Hybrid; CAD 200,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading payments technology company in Canada is seeking a Principal Engineer to architect and build highly reliable and scalable payment applications. The role requires strong collaboration with engineering teams and leadership in design best practices. Candidates should have over 12 years of SaaS experience, including expertise in cloud-native architecture and API design. This position offers a competitive salary and flexible work arrangements, emphasizing a remote-first philosophy with opportunities for hybrid work.

Benefits

Flexible work hours

Competitive health benefits

401k plan with employer matching

VGS stock options

Life & disability insurance

Professional learning reimbursement

Qualifications

• 12+ years experience in software architecture, design and development in a Cloud SaaS environment.
• Extensive experience in building highly available, reliable and scalable SaaS applications/platforms.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with Payments Engineering teams to design and develop payments applications.
• Work with CTO to create holistic technology solutions.
• Drive measurable outcomes and mentor engineers.

Skills

API design

Cloud-native architecture

Microservices

CI/CD

Docker

Kubernetes

Java

Python

Observability solutions

Tools

Grafana

Open Telemetry

AWS services

Kafka

Job description

VGS is the world's leader in payment tokenization. Large banks, aspiring fintechs, and growing merchants embed our universal token vault into their technology stack to manage the complexities of payment data tokenization across processors and networks, open banking, card issuance, omnichannel loyalty, PCI compliance, payment orchestration, and more. We empower our clients and partners by tokenizing sensitive payment data, limiting compliance scope, and consolidating payments to unlock revenue and business opportunities.

VGS provides processor-agnostic tokenization solutions via secure universal token vaults, iframes, mobile SDKs, tokenization proxies, APIs, and data orchestration tooling to support payment acceptance, card issuance, PII and bank account tokenization, and other payments value-added services. Some of the use cases we enable include multi-processor Network Tokenization, Account Updater, payment orchestration, secure settlement file processing, 3DS, and Risk provider connectivity.

We are looking for a well-versed, passionate Principal Engineer, who wants to play a key role in architecting and building highly available, reliable and scalable payments applications. This position will directly report to the Sr. Director of Engineering.

We’re seeking individuals with an equal flair for creative problem solving, enthusiasm for new technologies, and desire to contribute to our product. You will likely be successful in this role if you identify with the following traits: attention to detail, problem solver, customer oriented, versatile, resilient and confident. If all of this sounds interesting to you, we’d love to hear from you.

What you will be doing at VGS…

• Collaborate and communicate with Payments Engineering teams to design, develop, and champion best-practices, patterns and standards for all payments applications.
• Work closely with our CTO and other architects to create holistic technology solutions for our customers. This requires an equal part collaboration with the product management and engineering management.
• Be part of the Tech Leads group, driving measurable outcomes and iterative delivery strategy, removing roadblocks, empowering others, and mentoring high‑potential engineers.
• Produce clear, detailed and actionable design documents, architecture blueprints, architectural decisions with context, decision and tradeoffs.
• Be involved in hands‑on development of proof‑of‑concepts, prototypes, and real production‑ready code.
• Mentor engineers on architecture best practices and standards.
• Engage in all phases of the software lifecycle‑ design, implement, test, deploy, and support services in production.
• Maintain a culture of code quality through rigorous testing, automation, and code reviews.
• Be proactive and innovative‑ we rely on your feedback to build a world‑class product.
• Be a part of a team that believes in the core values of transparency, collaboration, grit, and humility; in going above and beyond what is required in order to do the right thing for our customers and the company; and in having fun while doing all this!

What we are looking for from you (Requirements)...

• 12+ years experience in software architecture, design and development in a Cloud SaaS environment.
• Extensive experience in building highly available, reliable and scalable SaaS applications/platforms.
• Strong experience in building backend API specs, mocks, and service implementations.
• Solid understanding of cloud-native architecture, microservices, CI/CD (GitHub Actions, Argo), GitOps, Authentication and Authorization, APIs and API Gateway, Docker, Kubernetes (EKS), Kafka (MSK), Java, Spring Framework, Python, and AWS services.
• Strong experience in Observability solutions using Grafana and Open Telemetry.
• Hands‑on experience in DevOps, SRE, Configuration Management, and Release Management.
• Experience with payments technologies and ecosystem (card networks, PSP integration) is highly preferred
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.

$200,000 - $240,000 a year

What you get from us...

• Flexible work hours and flexible PTO
• Competitive health benefits
• VGS stock options
• 401k plan, with employer matching 4% and immediate vesting (available only for US employees)
• Life & disability insurance
• Pre‑tax flexible spending accounts, dependent and healthcare FSA (available only for US employees)
• Global parental leave program
• Employee Assistance Program
• Home Internet reimbursement
• New hire home office set‑up allowance
• Professional learning reimbursement

At VGS, we have a remote‑first philosophy because we believe flexibility leads to great work and a healthy work‑life balance. That said, if you live within 30 miles of one of our office locations, you’ll be on a hybrid schedule with some in‑person time—because we know there’s real value in coming together.

We’re not about being in the office every day—but we are about connection, collaboration, and the energy that comes from a great brainstorm, a team lunch, or celebrating a big win in person.

We consider applicants without regard to race, color, national origin, sex, age, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, marital status, physical or mental disability, or other protected classes under all local, state, and federal laws and ordinances (AA/EOE/W/M/Vet/Disabled).

Qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records will be considered for the position in accordance with the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance.

VGS will not be able to provide any kind of employment sponsorship at this time.

Please note we are currently only hiring in the following states...

California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington