Principal Engineer, Alternative Investments Technology

CPP Investments | Investissements RPC•Toronto, ON

21d•Onsite

About The Position

Joining CPP Investments means joining one of the world’s most admired and respected institutional investors to drive a single mandate: to deliver strong, sustainable returns for generations of Canadians. With a long-term horizon and global reach, we deploy capital at scale across public and private markets. Our size, stability, and disciplined investment philosophy allow us to pursue complex opportunities and build enduring partnerships worldwide. For our people, this means meaningful work with tangible impact, real opportunity, and collaboration with exceptional colleagues who value partnership and performance. Here, you’ll contribute to outcomes that matter alongside team members committed to excellence and shared success. Role Summary: Technology at CPP Investments is not a support function. It underpins how capital is allocated, how risk is measured, and how performance is evaluated across a global portfolio. The systems we design and operate directly influence high-consequence decisions that shape long-term outcomes at scale. We are seeking a Principal Engineer to define architectural direction and elevate engineering standards across critical systems and data capabilities. This is a senior, hands-on individual contributor role operating at Director level. You will not only shape what we build, but how we build it. Your influence will extend beyond a single team. You will guide high-impact technical decisions, strengthen DevOps and security practices, improve data product maturity, and enable responsible adoption of emerging technologies such as Generative AI. If you are motivated by complex systems, consequential trade-offs, and raising the technical bar across an organization, this role offers uncommon scope and impact. About This Opportunity This Principal Engineer will operate within Alternative Asset Technology domain, which delivers the platforms and data capabilities that support a diverse set of private market strategies across private equity, real estate, infrastructure, credit, and other illiquid assets. These investments are central to the Fund’s long-term performance and require specialized technology solutions to support complex deal structures, portfolio analytics, and operational workflows. The Principal Engineer will focus on strengthening architectural coherence across interconnected platforms, improving data integration and product maturity, and ensuring engineering practices scale alongside evolving investment and regulatory complexity.

Requirements

Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
10+ years designing, building, and operating complex production systems at scale.
Demonstrated ownership of architectural decisions with enterprise impact and influence across multiple teams or domains.
Deep understanding of modern software architecture, cloud-native development, DevOps practices, and operational reliability.
You are motivated to contribute to something larger than yourself, approach complex challenges with rigor, and hold yourself to high standards in a collaborative, performance-driven environment.

Responsibilities

Define and evolve architectural direction across systems and data capabilities.
Align domain-level architectural direction and engineering practices with enterprise design principles, lifecycle standards, and decision frameworks defined by the Technology Architecture & Practices function.
Make and validate consequential trade-offs across scalability, resilience, performance, cost, and security.
Ensure solutions are designed for operability, observability, and long-term sustainability.
Exercise senior architectural judgement on complex cross-team initiatives and high-impact technical decisions in collaboration with peer Principal Engineers
Collaborate with the Technology Architecture & Practices function to ensure domain architectures align with enterprise design principles, lifecycle standards, and long-term platform sustainability goals.
Raise engineering standards across the department, not just within a single team.
Influence senior engineers and business leaders through clear, well-reasoned technical judgement.
Develop deep understanding of business domains to ensure architecture supports real-world workflows and outcomes.
Work across teams to prevent siloed solutions and ensure architectural coherence.
Mentor senior engineers and elevate technical standards across the organization.
Strengthen DevOps discipline, deployment reliability, and secure-by-design engineering practices.
Improve data product maturity through clarity of ownership, interoperability, and trusted consumption patterns.
Guide responsible adoption of Generative AI and advanced automation.
Actively prevent unnecessary technology proliferation and architectural fragmentation across teams