Principal Backend Developer

Cadstrom • Montreal, QC

2d

About The Position

We're hiring a Principal Backend Developer to join the Cadstrom Platform team and own the core service infrastructure powering our product end-to-end: the operator data review and entry systems that fuel our knowledge base, the services backing our AI analysis, and the orchestration layer that runs distributed simulation workloads for our deterministic validation engine. As a senior IC, you'll set the technical bar for the team's services, make the hard architecture calls, and stay hands-on shipping the work — AI-assisted development means writing the code yourself is usually the highest-leverage move, not the lowest.

We move fast — the product is shipping, customers are live, and every week matters. This is a high-ownership role for an engineer who treats Cadstrom's outcome as their own.

What are we doing?
We are accelerating the world's hardware ingenuity by blending generative AI, ML, and novel deterministic approaches to electronics simulation and validation. We're providing our enthusiastic customers intelligent and automated access to the most advanced validation tools to eliminate respins – helping engineers of all levels deliver their designs faster, cheaper, and with less waste.

Who are we?
We are a small team of innovators who are passionate about fundamentally improving how electrical engineers deliver electronics with higher confidence. We are backed by Bison Ventures, Innovation Endeavors, and the Allen Institute for AI's Incubator. Our distinguished founders are responsible for creating the largest product development firm in the US, and building Azure Quantum (and more!) at Microsoft. We know you'll be in good company.

Requirements

• 8+ years shipping backend systems in production, with at least 3 years operating at a Principal, Staff, or equivalent senior IC level.
• Deep TypeScript experience for production backend services — typing, packaging, services, and automated tests.
• Hands-on experience designing and operating Postgres at production scale — schemas, indexing, query optimization, and migrations.
• Strong experience managing AWS infrastructure with infrastructure-as-code (e.g. Terraform).
• Track record of making significant architecture decisions that influenced product direction and team velocity.
• Experience with distributed systems, orchestration, and operating long-running compute workloads.
• Excellent written and verbal communication — able to convey trade-offs and decisions clearly across engineers, peers, and leadership.
• Undergraduate degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related STEM field.

Nice To Haves

• Experience shipping systems that back AI products — RAG, search, retrieval, or embedding infrastructure.
• Experience with Nest.js or equivalent TypeScript server frameworks.
• Experience operating distributed simulation, batch, or scientific computing workloads — Temporal, job queues, compute orchestration, autoscaling for bursty workloads.
• Familiarity with containers for service deployment.
• Familiarity with EDA tooling, electronics design, or other complex technical domains.
• Startup experience.
• Based in Montreal or the GTA.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture and implementation of Cadstrom's core platform services — the operator data review and entry systems, the services backing our AI analysis, and the orchestration of distributed simulation workloads.
• Build and evolve our AWS infrastructure with infrastructure-as-code, balancing speed, cost, and reliability as we scale.
• Design and maintain our Postgres data model — schemas, indexing, query patterns, and migration strategy that let the team move fast without painting into corners.
• Set the technical bar for backend services across the team: service boundaries, API design, observability, deployment practices, and the operational realities of running production systems.
• Architect and operate distributed compute for our simulation workloads — job orchestration, scaling, reliability, and cost control for bursty long-running jobs.
• Ship. AI-assisted development has changed the math: the right move is often to write the code yourself rather than delegate. You're hands-on by default, and you mentor through the work itself — code reviews, architecture discussions, and the bar you set with your own commits.
• Partner cross-functionally with AI/ML, frontend, and electrical engineering domain experts to make sure the platform serves their needs without becoming a bottleneck.
• AI. Hands-on experience using AI-assisted development tools (Claude, Cursor, or equivalent) as a daily driver — with judgment about when to lean on them and when to override them.

Benefits

• Early Stage Equity Package
• Leading benefits - we invest deeply in the health and wellbeing of our team with leading startup benefits, 0% copay across the board, and a $2k/year HSA.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal
• Education Level: Associate degree