Hybrid Principal Engineer

at Helcim

• Job title: Principal Engineer
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Lead
• Salary: Not specified
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Tech skills: Distributed Systems, Microservices, PHP, Python, Go
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Calgary, Canada

About the role

• Principal Software Engineer at Helcim, ensuring cohesive architecture across autonomous teams and guiding AI-native platform integration. Focused on systems clarity and governance for scalable solutions.

Responsibilities

• You ensure that Team A’s velocity doesn’t become Team B’s bottleneck.
• This is not a coding-heavy role (expect ~5-10% hands-on coding).
• You will lead through Consensus-Driven Governance.
• You will audit the landscape and use technical diplomacy to ensure teams align on standards—not because they are forced to, but because you have built the consensus that it is the right technical path.
• You own the Architectural Runway for our entire platform.
• You answer the critical high-level questions such as: "Does this scale?", "Does this fit our long-term strategy?", and "Should we build this, or buy it?".
• You will guide the technical integration of modern agentic patterns with existing systems.

Requirements

• 10+ years of engineering experience with a focus on Distributed Systems and Service-Based Architectures.
• You can whiteboard the trade-offs between different architectural patterns (SOA, Microservices, Monoliths) confidently.
• Broad Tech Fluency: We value pattern recognition over syntax mastery. You don't need to be a PHP expert; you need a strong grounding in modern system design that applies across languages (Go, Python, PHP, etc.).
• Deep understanding of LLM integration patterns and experience designing systems that safely incorporate AI agents into production workflows.
• Proven ability to unify fragmented teams. You have a history of turning "governance" into a collaborative effort rather than a policing action.

Benefits

• Health and dental benefits: Through our Group Benefits, you’ll get access to dental benefits, extended healthcare benefits for drugs, vision, paramedical coverage (e.g. massage therapists, dieticians, mental health professionals), counseling, health service navigation, life insurance, critical illness and disability insurance, and more.
• Dedicated Health Spending Account (“HSA”): An additional budget available for you to spend on health-related expenses (e.g. eyeglasses, therapy).
• Maternity and Parental Leave: To help launch our team members into this phase of family life we have some additional benefits in place including salary top for the birthing parents and a bonding break for non-birthing parents.
• Stock Options: Stock options enable our team to purchase Helcim shares at a future date at a specified price. Every team member, not just people leaders and executives receive equity (aka ownership in the company).
• Vacation Time: All team members get paid vacation time and a company break in December so they can recharge when they need it.
• Flexible work location: Work and life happens at different times and places. This is why our team enjoys the flexibility of hybrid work and flexibility around hours of work, so we can all do our best work. Our hybrid work schedule offers flexibility to work from home on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Furthermore, our core hours give team members flexibility to manage other parts of their lives.
• Training: Helcim will cover 50% of the applicable training costs of up to $500 per year.