Principal Software Engineer (Backend)

eBay Inc.; Toronto; On-site; CAD 130,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Join eBay's Core Buyer engineering team as a Principal Engineer, where you will lead the strategic direction of backend systems and work with a talented team to solve complex challenges in e-commerce. The role requires expertise in distributed systems, microservices, and a passion for building scalable, high-performance solutions. In this dynamic and collaborative environment, you'll influence long-term technical decisions while driving innovation across multiple product categories.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience in software engineering with a focus on backend systems.
• Proven experience designing large-scale systems in high-traffic environments.
• Experience with Agile/Scrum methodologies.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture vision and solve complex technical challenges.
• Modernize technology stack and advocate for continuous improvement.
• Mentor engineers and drive cross-domain initiatives.

Skills

Problem-solving

Innovation

Collaboration

Technical leadership

Communication

Education

Master's degree in Computer Science

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Tools

Java

Kotlin

Job description

At eBay, we're more than a global ecommerce leader — we’re changing the way the world shops and sells. Our platform empowers millions of buyers and sellers in more than 190 markets around the world. We’re committed to pushing boundaries and leaving our mark as we reinvent the future of ecommerce for enthusiasts.

Our customers are our compass, authenticity thrives, bold ideas are welcome, and everyone can bring their unique selves to work — every day. We're in this together, sustaining the future of our customers, our company, and our planet.

Join a team of passionate thinkers, innovators, and dreamers — and help us connect people and build communities to create economic opportunity for all.

We are the Core Buyer engineering team that helps deliver engaging customer experiences for our buyers.

We own View Item domain (Item Page, Transactions such Best Offers and Auctions) and help deliver innovations for our Focus Categories like Collectibles (Trading Cards, Comics, Toys), Fashion and Parts & Accessories.

We drive billions of dollars in revenue via 100’s of millions of page views delivered daily across the globe, across all devices & browsers. Performance, Accuracy, Real time systems (e.g. winning bid), Scalability and availability are paramount.

These experiences have great financial and customer impact.

We strive to delight the diverse customer base across the world. We are a data driven agile organization. We ship often, get immediate user feedback and use experimentation to make decisions. We constantly push for engineering excellence and the best engineering culture.

We are looking for highly collaborative, smart, driven engineers who can help us reshape the future of our e-commerce platform.

You'll be working with a world class team of engineers, designers, product managers, business partners and analysts in a fun environment building world-class customer experiences.

As a Principal Engineer you will serve as a senior technical leader, responsible for setting the strategic direction of our backend systems and platforms.

You will work across teams and domains to solve the most complex technical challenges, influence long-term technical decisions, and create scalable solutions that support the company’s growth.

Your leadership and technical expertise will drive innovation in platform architecture, system design, and engineering practices for multiple categories of products on e-commerce platform.

Key Responsibilities

• Leading architecture vision and solving problems that span domains and systems

• Up-level technical community and foster a culture to drive engineering efficiency, velocity, quality and innovation.

• Influence and drive cross domain initiatives with senior technical leaders for architecture alignment, module reuse, performance, data consistency, and high availability.

• Getting into the details, investigating issues, writing code, performing code reviews, and prototyping new solutions

• Modernizing and advocating for continuous improvement of the technology stack when applicable by driving change through the organization

• Shepherding and collaborating effectively with product, design and engineering teams across multiple domains and multiple geographies

• Growing your team through coaching, mentoring

Job Requirements:

• 15+ years of experience in software engineering, with a focus on large-scale, distributed backend systems.

• Master's degree in Computer Science, or Bachelor's degree with equivalent experience

• Proven experience designing and architecting complex systems at massive scale, ideally within e-commerce or other high-traffic environments.

• Expertise in distributed systems, microservices, event-driven architectures

• Deep understanding of high-performance databases (SQL, NoSQL), caching strategies, and data replication techniques.

• Solid understanding of scalability and performance tuning, for high-volume, critical applications.

• Experience working with Java, Kotlin, and deep familiarity with system-level design principles.

• Track record of leading multi-functional projects, aligning teams around complex technical initiatives that impact the entire company.

• Demonstrated ability to mentor engineers at all levels, provide strategic technical leadership, and influence organizational direction.

• Exceptional problem-solving skills, with a focus on innovation, scalability, and performance optimization.

• Strong communication and leadership skills, with the ability to collaborate with both technical and non-technical partners at all levels of the organization.

• Experience with Agile/Scrum methodologies

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eBay is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, and disability, or other legally protected status.If you have a need that requires accommodation, please contact us [e-mail]. We will make every effort to respond to your request for accommodation as soon as possible. View our accessibility statement to learn more about eBay's commitment to ensuring digital accessibility for people with disabilities.

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