About this role
General Information: Job Title: Principal Engineer ? New Initiatives (Founding Platform Engineer) Location: Toronto (Onsite/ Hybrid) Job Type: Full-Time Reporting Line: Head of R&D Salary Range: $175?$210k CAD per year (negotiable)
About Fulfillment IQ (FIQ): Fulfillment IQ is a supply chain engineering and transformation company that helps brands, retailers, and 3PLs design, build, and scale high-performance logistics operations. We work at the intersection of strategy, operations, and technology where we solve complex, real-world problems across warehouse design, automation, order management, transportation, and end-to-end supply chain execution. Our teams combine deep domain expertise with strong technical capability, delivering outcomes through consulting, systems implementation, and proprietary platforms that accelerate time-to-value and reduce delivery risk. If you enjoy working in complex environments, partnering closely with clients, and seeing your work make a tangible impact on how global commerce moves, this is the place where your skills and judgment truly come to life.
Role Overview: We are seeking a Principal Engineer to act as the founding technical owner of a brand-new greenfield platform within Fulfillment IQ. This is not a feature delivery role. This is not a maintenance role. This is a 0-to-1 platform build role. You will be responsible for designing the core architecture, selecting the technology stack, and writing the foundational production code that future teams will build on. In the early phase, you will operate as a hands-on founding engineer. As the platform matures, your role will evolve into long-term technical ownership and system stewardship. This role blends deep engineering execution with architectural responsibility and product-level technical decision-making. Must Have:
• 10+ years of experience building cloud-native backend or platform systems • Deep, hands-on Python fluency. This is a code-first founding role. You?ll write production Python from day one. • Proven experience delivering greenfield products or internal platforms from scratch • Strong hands-on experience designing and building distributed systems • Experience with modern cloud infrastructure and deployment pipelines • Ability to translate ambiguous business requirements into production-ready systems • Strong engineering fundamentals across system design, performance, reliability, and maintainability • Comfort operating in high-ownership, low-process, early-stage environments
Nice to Have:
• Experience building workflow engines, orchestration systems, or DAG-based processing platforms • Experience integrating AI/ML or LLM-driven components into production systems • Exposure to logistics, supply chain, fintech, or data-intensive SaaS platforms • Prior experience in founding engineer or early platform team roles
Key Responsibilities:
• Own end-to-end technical design and implementation of a new greenfield platform • Select technology stack, data models, and architectural patterns • Build core services, APIs, workflows, and foundational infrastructure • Establish development standards, CI/CD pipelines, and engineering best practices • Design systems with scalability, performance, and long-term maintainability in mind • Rapidly prototype and validate architectural decisions through real implementations • Translate business requirements into robust technical solutions • Identi