Senior Principal Software Development Engineer - Remote

BioLegend, Inc.; Canada; Remote; CAD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading biotechnology company in Canada seeks a Senior Principal Software Development Engineer to own products end-to-end. This role involves designing, building, and deploying software while working in a high-trust team. Candidates should have over 10 years of experience in software development, demonstrate strong technical skills in both front-end and back-end development, and be proficient with AI tools to enhance productivity. Competitive compensation and benefits included.

Benefits

Competitive compensation and performance-based bonuses

Comprehensive health and wellness benefits

Flexible work arrangements

Learning budget for upskilling

Collaborative team environment

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software development experience with ownership of deployed systems.
• Experience in designing scalable, maintainable distributed systems.
• Proficient with Git and collaborative workflows.

Responsibilities

• Own product features end-to-end from design to deployment.
• Lead the design of systems including APIs and data models.
• Build and manage CI/CD pipelines for smooth operations.

Skills

Front-end development expertise (React, TypeScript)

Back-end development (Node.js, C#, Python)

Cloud proficiency (AWS services)

Database skills (PostgreSQL)

CI/CD expertise

AI tool proficiency

Agile mindset

Testing discipline (unit, integration, end-to-end)

Job description

We are seeking a Senior Principal Software Development Engineer - a high-judgment, full-stack developer who thrives on owning products end-to-end. This role combines deep technical expertise with product sensibility, operational awareness, and fluency in modern AI-assisted development.

You’ll design, build, deploy, and operate software that delivers real user and business value. You’ll work in a small, high-trust team where individuals have broad responsibility — not just for delivering features, but for improving the platform, refining our practices, and shaping the team culture. Leadership here isn’t a title; it’s the initiative to make things better.

This is not a narrow “feature developer” position — it’s a role for those who think in systems, act with autonomy, and care about quality from concept to production.

Key Responsibilities

End-to-End Ownership: Design, build, deploy, monitor, and continuously improve product features across the full stack.

Architecture & Systems Thinking: Lead or contribute to the design of scalable, secure, and maintainable systems including APIs, data models, and deployment strategies.

AI-Augmented Development: Use modern AI tools to accelerate coding, testing, documentation, and debugging while maintaining a high standard of quality and judgment.

CI/CD & Operations: Build and manage automated CI/CD pipelines, monitor production health, and ensure reliability, observability, and cost efficiency.

Production Mindset: You’ve been on-call and know what it takes to run reliable systems. You ship with confidence because you’ve built proper testing and monitoring.

Product Mindset: Collaborate directly with product managers, designers, and scientists to understand user problems and translate them into elegant, working solutions.

Code Quality & Testing: Maintain high coding standards, implement automated testing, and review peers’ work to ensure system integrity and performance.

Mentorship & Team Culture: Share knowledge, promote modern engineering practices, and contribute to a culture of learning, speed, and continuous improvement.

Security & Compliance: Implement security best practices and support regulated development standards appropriate to our domain.

Basic Qualifications

Experience: 10+ years of software development, with demonstrable ownership of deployed systems and production services.

Technical Breadth: Strong experience with both front-end (React, TypeScript, HTML/CSS) and back-end (Node.js, C#, or Python) development.

System Design: Proven ability to design scalable, maintainable, and observable distributed systems.

CI/CD Expertise: Hands-on experience with modern CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, AWS CodePipeline, or similar) and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, AWS CDK).

Cloud Proficiency: Solid understanding of AWS services (EC2, Lambda, RDS, S3, etc.) and deployment architectures.

AI Fluency: Experience leveraging AI tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, or similar) for development, testing, or data analysis.

Database Skills: Strong SQL experience (PostgreSQL preferred) plus familiarity with NoSQL systems.

Version Control: Proficient with Git and collaborative workflows (PRs, branching strategies, reviews).

Testing Discipline: Comfortable with unit, integration, and end-to-end testing frameworks (Playwright, Jest, Cypress, xUnit, etc.).

Agile Mindset: Experienced in fast, iterative delivery environments emphasizing learning, autonomy, and outcome over process.

Communication: Able to articulate complex technical topics clearly, and collaborate effectively across disciplines.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with event-driven or microservices architectures.
• Familiarity with observability tools (Datadog, Prometheus, ELK).
• Knowledge of machine learning or AI integration patterns.
• Contributions to open-source or internal developer-tooling initiatives.
• Interest in Lean, DevOps, or Continuous Delivery principles (Humble/Farley, Forsgren, O'Reilly).

What Success Looks Like

• You deliver features that make it all the way to production tested, monitored, and loved by users.
• You improve velocity without sacrificing quality.
• You use AI tools effectively to multiply your output and reduce friction.
• You take initiative to fix what’s broken, simplify what’s complex, and ship what matters.
• You elevate your peers through mentorship, clarity, and example.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation and performance-based bonuses
• Comprehensive health and wellness benefits
• Flexible work arrangements and generous vacation policy
• Learning budget for technical and AI-related upskilling
• Collaborative, mission-driven team environment