[Hiring] Principal Engineer, Platform Engineering @Tucows

Role Description

We are seeking to hire a self-motivated Principal Engineer with experience in Platform Engineering who enjoys learning, sharing knowledge, and applying new technologies to complex problems. In this role, you will set technical direction and deliver high-leverage platform capabilities that make Wavelo faster to ship, easier to operate, and easier to scale—with a particular focus on:

• Environment automation
• CI/CD maturity
• Reliability and observability
• Developer experience

This role is designed for someone who thrives in ambiguous problem spaces, can align technical investments to business outcomes, and consistently elevates engineering quality across teams. You will partner closely with Infrastructure / DevOps teams and cross-functional stakeholders to reduce “coordination as a dependency” and drive measurable improvements using delivery and reliability metrics such as:

• DORA metrics
• Incident reduction
• Toil reduction

This is a remote opportunity for applicants in Canada.

Job Duties

In the First Month

• Gain a deep understanding of the current platform landscape including infrastructure, platform services, and application layers.
• Identify key constraints that are slowing engineering delivery.
• Build context around the environment platform strategy, including declarative environments, generated artifacts, and self-service developer experiences.
• Identify current platform gaps such as manual steps or fragile integrations.
• Establish strong working relationships across Infrastructure/CI, Operations, Security, and product engineering teams.
• Begin shaping shared standards through design reviews and code reviews.
• Identify 1–2 high-leverage improvements (e.g., removing manual provisioning steps, improving reliability signals, tightening CI/CD contracts).

In the First 3 Months

• Contribute to and lead technical design and architecture discussions for foundational platform initiatives.
• Design and implement features that improve platform repeatability, reliability, and safety.
• Deliver solutions such as:
• Dependency-ordered orchestration inputs
• Self-service preview tooling
• Standardized deployment interfaces
• Promote an “automate-first” mindset by reducing manual operational work and pushing reliability and quality earlier in the development lifecycle.
• Improve engineering quality through:
• Strong code review culture
• Clear technical standards
• Practical documentation and runbooks that reduce tribal knowledge.

In the First Year

• Own multiple platform initiatives end-to-end, from concept through production outcomes.
• Balance delivery speed with sound architectural decisions and long-term maintainability.
• Set technical direction across teams within your domain.
• Deliver measurable improvements in:
• Environment spin-up time
• Deployment and rollback safety
• Incident and operational toil reduction
• Observability coverage
• Act as a mentor to senior and junior engineers, multiplying impact through coaching and technical leadership.
• Establish sustainable cross-team alignment mechanisms, including:
• Clear platform contracts
• Reference implementations
• Architectural decision records.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software development experience or equivalent depth of technical ownership.
• Demonstrated experience leading platform, infrastructure, or developer-experience initiatives that improved reliability and/or delivery speed.
• Experience with modern software delivery practices.

Requirements

• Proven ability to lead and deliver complex, loosely scoped technical initiatives.
• Strong platform engineering mindset, including building reusable primitives, paved-road solutions, and automation frameworks that enable product teams.
• Experience designing and building reliable, scalable, and operationally sound software systems.
• Ability to influence without authority, driving alignment across teams through clarity, pragmatism, and shared standards.
• Strong automation-first mindset with a focus on measurable engineering outcomes such as:
• DORA metrics
• Toil reduction
• Faster environment provisioning.

Benefits

• The base salary range for this position is $164,500 to $192,800. Range shown in $CAD for Canadian residents. Other countries will differ.
• Range may vary on a number of factors including, but not limited to: location, experience and qualifications.
• Tucows believes in a total rewards offering that includes fair compensation and generous benefits.