Principal Data Engineer

Applied Systems Canada • ,

1d • CA$200,000 - CA$250,000

About The Position

Applied Systems is seeking a Principal Data Engineer to shape the architectural foundation of its Data and Analytics capabilities as the company scales its insights and prepares for enterprise AI. This role is a technical leadership and hands-on practitioner position, focused on designing, guiding, and teaching by doing. The successful candidate will own outcomes, uphold high standards, and develop simpler solutions for customers and teams.

The role calls for an AI-first approach to architecture. The Principal Data Engineer will define the long-term vision for AI-enabled data architecture, design and govern agentic workflows with appropriate guardrails, and identify system-level insights that improve quality and velocity across the domain. The position also establishes and guides organization-wide data architecture, engineering standards, governance, and practices while mentoring engineers and influencing cross-functional roadmaps.

Requirements

• 15 or more years of experience in software or data engineering or architecture, with outstanding impact.
• A degree in Computer Science or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Expert knowledge of data architecture principles and best practices.
• Hands-on builder experience, including actively coding, testing, and validating architecture at scale.
• Proven ability to influence without authority.
• A pragmatic approach and a strong focus on eliminating waste.
• A player-coach mindset and commitment to teaching through action.
• Adaptability, resilience, and the ability to thrive amid ambiguity and iteration.
• Excellent communication skills, including the ability to explain complex problems clearly to different audiences.
• Expertise across data and software technologies.
• Proven experience architecting large-scale data warehouses or lakehouses.
• Solid understanding of data modeling concepts, including dimensional modeling and streaming architectures.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with GCP BigQuery and dbt.
• Experience with vector stores.
• Experience implementing data catalogs.

Responsibilities

• Define large-scale data architecture decisions for batch and streaming platforms, warehouses, and lakehouses, evaluating tradeoffs related to quality, scalability, and long-term sustainability.
• Architect observability, alerting, and incident-response frameworks for monitoring data pipeline health and SLAs, and serve as the technical escalation point for complex data architecture problems.
• Partner with teams across Applied to define standards for data quality, lineage tracking, access control, cataloging, and governance, and establish SLAs and SLOs for critical data assets.
• Design data modeling standards for OLAP and warehouse, OLTP and transactional, streaming and real-time, and AI, vector, and feature-store use cases.
• Define patterns for embedding AI and agent-supported workflows across the data engineering lifecycle and enable teams to adopt them at scale.
• Define and enforce organization-wide data engineering standards, best practices, and design patterns.
• Mentor and grow engineers through code reviews, design discussions, and technical guidance.
• Influence cross-functional roadmaps by translating business requirements into data architecture strategies.

Benefits

• Medical coverage
• Dental coverage
• Vision coverage
• Holiday and vacation time
• Health and wellness days
• A bonus day for your birthday
• Eligible employees may participate in incentive compensation programs, such as annual bonuses or commissions.
• Comprehensive benefits package

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Principal