Principal Backend Engineer

Perks

• Parts Town Pride - check out our virtual tour and culture!
• Quarterly profit-sharing bonus
• Hybrid Work schedule
• Team member appreciation events and recognition programs
• Volunteer opportunities
• All the traditional benefits like health, dental and life insurance, RRSP/DPSP match, employee assistance programs and time away - we've got you covered.

As a Principal Backend Engineer, you will design, architect, and optimize scalable microservices that power our eCommerce and enterprise platforms. You'll drive backend architecture and ensure seamless integration across systems like commerce, CMS, ERP, PIM, and marketing. Championing best practices in modularization, API design, and event‑driven architectures, you'll leverage Node.js, Type Script, Docker, Kubernetes, and serverless technologies to create secure, high‑performance services.

You’ll own backend engineering policies, CI/CD pipelines, and testing automation to ensure reliable deployments. As a technical leader, you'll define logging, observability, and disaster recovery strategies, ensuring high availability. Collaboration with frontend, Dev Ops, and data teams will be key to optimizing system performance. Mentoring engineers and contributing to architectural decisions will be central to your role. This position is ideal for someone with extensive experience in backend design and distributed systems.

• Backend Architecture:
  Design scalable, cloud‑native microservices and ensure seamless interoperability between platforms (eCommerce, CMS, ERP, PIM, marketing)
• Implementation & Best Practices:
  Leverage Node.js, Type Script, Docker, Kubernetes, and serverless technologies to build high-performance services. Advocate for modularization, API‑first, event‑driven architectures, and domain‑driven design
• Engineering Standards:
  Establish CI/CD practices, automated testing, and backend tooling standards. Drive adoption of best practices for service‑to‑service communication (REST, GraphQL, gRPC)
• Operational Practices:
  Lead disaster recovery strategies, define observability and logging best practices, and drive automated testing strategies
• Cross‑functional
  
  Collaboration:
  
  Work with frontend, Dev Ops, and data teams to optimize APIs, caching, and databases.
• Mentor engineers and collaborate with other Principal Engineers to ensure engineering excellence

• You have strong written and verbal communication skills in English
• You have 10+ years of experience in backend system design, eCommerce, and distributed applications
• You're an expert in Node.js, Type Script, and cloud-native platforms (Azure preferred)
• You're passionate and knowledgeable of databases (PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis), microservices, event-driven architectures (Kafka, NATS), and API standards (REST, GraphQL)
• You possess experience with unit, integration, and contract testing (Jest, Mocha, Pact) and CI/CD (Terraform, Pulumi)
• You are familiar with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure), serverless computing, Kubernetes, and containerization
• You have proven ability to mentor engineers and collaborate across teams.

Parts Town is an equal opportunity employer committed to creating an inclusive, accessible, and welcoming workplace where everyone can thrive. We celebrate diversity and are committed to fostering a culture of respect, belonging, and equal opportunity. Accommodation is available upon request throughout the recruitment, selection, and employment process. If you require a reasonable accommodation, please let us know and we will work with you to meet your needs.