Staff Software Engineer

CircleCI; Toronto; On-site; CAD 190,000 - 238,000; Full time

Job summary

CircleCI is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to architect and lead the implementation of advanced distributed systems, influencing technical vision and solving complex challenges. The role demands strong leadership in designing scalable solutions that enhance developer experience while mentoring emerging engineers. A minimum of 10 years in software development is required, with a proven track record in distributed systems and proficiency in Go.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software development experience.
• Expert-level proficiency in Go and distributed systems principles.
• Demonstrated ability to navigate complex technical challenges.

Responsibilities

• Architect, design, and lead the implementation of sophisticated distributed systems.
• Drive technical vision and influence architecture decisions.
• Proactively identify and mitigate technical risks for mission-critical systems.

Skills

Distributed Systems Principles

Technical Leadership

Systems Thinking

Mentorship

Go

Technical Communication

Problem Solving

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Job description

About CircleCI Engineering

At CircleCI, our engineering teams are the driving force behind the platform trusted by developers worldwide to build, test, and deploy their code with confidence. We operate at a massive scale, processing over 50 million builds per month for organizations ranging from innovative startups to industry-leading enterprises. Our platform sits at a critical intersection in the software development lifecycle, where reliability, performance, and user experience directly impact the productivity of development teams around the globe.

As we continue to innovate, we're increasingly leveraging AI to transform the software delivery experience. From intelligent test selection that reduces build times, to predictive analytics that prevent pipeline failures, to AI-powered developer tools that streamline workflows, we're using machine learning and artificial intelligence to solve complex engineering challenges. We believe AI represents the next frontier in CI/CD, enabling smarter, more efficient, and more reliable software delivery pipelines.

Your work at CircleCI directly impacts how software is delivered across the industry. When you contribute to our systems—whether they're customer-facing interfaces, core platform capabilities, or developer tools—you're helping teams worldwide ship better code faster and with greater confidence. The systems you'll help build enable innovation across the entire software industry, making you an essential part of the modern development ecosystem.

Team-Agnostic Placement

We hire team-agnostically at CircleCI, meaning we don’t recruit for a single team from the start. Instead, we get to know each candidate through the interview process and then place them on the team where their strengths, interests, and experience will make the greatest impact. This approach allows us to be thoughtful about matching engineers with the right challenges, and it gives new hires a stronger foundation for long-term success and growth. It’s part of our commitment to building balanced, high-performing teams that are set up to thrive.

By carefully matching your skills to the right team, we ensure you can make the most meaningful impact on systems that are critical to the success of development teams worldwide.

What You'll Do:

• Architect, design, and lead the implementation of sophisticated distributed systems that address our most challenging technical problems and have company-wide impact.
• Drive technical vision within your team while influencing architecture decisions across your domain, establishing patterns and practices that become standards throughout the organization.
• Identify and solve systemic issues that span multiple components or services, developing architectural solutions that provide significant improvements to scalability, reliability, or developer experience.
• Lead technical strategy for complex initiatives that connect to high-level business objectives, translating product vision into technical approach with clear execution plans.
• Proactively identify and mitigate technical risks before they become critical issues, developing contingency plans and architectural safeguards for mission-critical systems.
• Serve as the technical authority in your area of expertise, making high-stakes technical decisions with significant long-term implications for the platform.
• Elevate the capabilities of senior engineers through targeted mentorship on both technical excellence and professional development, including architecture reviews, leadership development, cross-functional collaboration skills, and creating opportunities for others to grow their influence beyond pure technical contributions.
• Drive the resolution of deeply complex technical debt and legacy system modernization efforts that require deep domain knowledge and sophisticated migration strategies.
• Establish technical north stars and roadmaps for evolving critical systems over multiple quarters or years while balancing immediate business needs.
• Represent engineering in cross-functional strategic planning, providing technical perspective that helps shape product direction and company initiatives.

What You'll Bring:

• 10+ years of professional software development experience with proven expertise designing large-scale distributed systems that handle significant complexity and scale.
• Distinguished technical leadership track record with examples of architectural solutions that enabled step-function improvements in system capabilities.
• Expert-level proficiency in Go and exceptional command of distributed systems principles, including advanced consistency models, failure detection, consensus protocols, and performance optimization techniques.
• Demonstrated ability to navigate ambiguous problem spaces, deconstructing complex technical challenges into manageable components with clear implementation paths.
• Deep technical influence within engineering organizations, with evidence of having shaped technical direction beyond your immediate team.
• Exceptional systems thinking that considers interactions between components, anticipates failure modes, and designs robust solutions for mission-critical applications.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts with extraordinary clarity to audiences at all levels, from engineers to executives.
• Established record of growing senior engineers into stronger technical leaders through mentorship and creating growth opportunities.
• Exceptional judgment when making architectural tradeoffs that balance performance, reliability, development velocity, and business impact.
• Strong product and business acumen that enables you to connect technical decisions to user experience and business outcomes.

Bonus Skills (Nice to Have)

• Experience architecting sophisticated AI/ML systems integrated into production platforms with demonstrable business impact.
• Track record of designing advanced machine learning solutions for developer tooling that represent step-function improvements over traditional approaches.
• Expertise in leveraging LLMs and other AI technologies to solve complex engineering challenges in the CI/CD domain.
• Deep understanding of technical AI safety, explainability, and the implications of AI/ML for developer workflow optimization.
• Experience with defining platform-level AI strategies that balance innovation with reliability and security requirements.

Canada Base Pay Range $190,000 — $237,500 CAD

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonableaccommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to performessential job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment.Please contact us to request accommodation.

About CircleCI

CircleCI is the world’s largest continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD)platform, and the hub where code moves from idea to delivery. As one of the most-usedDevOps tools - processing more than 3 million jobs a day - CircleCI has unique access todata on how the most effective engineering teams work, and the tools to help softwarecompanies successfully leverage the power of AI into their commercial applications.Companies like Hinge, HuggingFace, and Samsung use us to improve engineering teamproductivity, release better products, and get to market faster.

Founded in 2011 and headquartered in downtown San Francisco with a global, remoteworkforce, CircleCI is venture-backed by Base10, Greenspring Associates, Eleven Prime,IVP, Sapphire Ventures, Top Tier Capital Partners, Baseline Ventures, Threshold
Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, Owl Rock Capital, Next Equity Partners, Heavybit, andHarrison Metal Capital.

CircleCI is an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sexual orientation, gender,gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, statusas a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicablelegally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminalhistories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.