Principal Backend Engineer, Canada

NovoEd is an enterprise learning platform that helps organizations build critical capabilities at scale through collaborative and experiential learning. Founded in 2012 out of Stanford’s Social Algorithm Laboratory, NovoEd has grown into a trusted partner for many of the world’s leading companies, executive education providers, and training organizations.

Today, NovoEd powers a modern learning ecosystem built around three core experiences: Learning, Mentoring, and Practicing. Our platform enables organizations to deliver cohort-based learning, structured mentorship, and real-world skill application in a single integrated environment—helping employees move beyond passive learning to actively develop and apply new skills.

AI is now a core part of the NovoEd platform. AI helps course creators generate and structure learning content more efficiently, provides learners with personalized insights and feedback, and supports interactive learning experiences such as guided practice, coaching, and role-playing scenarios. These capabilities help organizations scale high-quality learning experiences while maintaining engagement and practical skill development.

By combining collaborative learning design, AI-powered capabilities, and enterprise-grade technology, NovoEd connects global learners, mentors, and leaders in high-impact programs that drive measurable business outcomes. Organizations rely on NovoEd to develop leadership capabilities, accelerate transformation initiatives, and build the skills their workforce needs to succeed in a rapidly evolving world.

Overview

We are seeking a Principal Backend Engineer with deep expertise in backend systems and a strong track record of architecting scalable, reliable platforms. This role is responsible for shaping the technical direction of our backend architecture and helping guide the long-term evolution of our systems as the product and organization grow. In addition to defining architecture, the Principal Engineer owns platform-level outcomes, ensuring that backend systems deliver strong performance, reliability, and scalability that directly support business and product goals.

As a Principal Engineer, you will combine hands-on technical leadership with strategic architectural thinking. You will partner closely with engineering leadership, product teams, and cross-functional stakeholders to design solutions that balance scalability, reliability, and development velocity. In addition to leading complex technical initiatives, you will mentor engineers, influence engineering standards, and help raise the technical bar across the organization.

You will also identify and address systemic technical debt that impacts platform performance, reliability, and developer productivity, and drive initiatives that improve the organization’s ability to ship high-quality features faster.

You will also help advance modern engineering practices across the team, including the effective use of AI-assisted development tools and automation to improve developer productivity while maintaining rigorous standards for system design, code quality, and operational reliability.

Key Responsibilities

Architect and Build Scalable Systems

• Design and implement scalable, secure, and maintainable backend systems primarily using Ruby on Rails. Lead the architecture and development of backend services with a strong focus on performance, reliability, and long-term maintainability. Contribute to both new feature development and modernization of legacy systems.
• Use modern development workflows—including AI-assisted coding tools and coding agents—to accelerate development while maintaining rigorous engineering standards. Evaluate and validate AI-generated code to ensure correctness, security, and architectural consistency.

System Integrations & API Development

• Lead the design and development of APIs (REST, GraphQL) that enable reliable communication between internal services and external platforms. Integrate third-party services while ensuring performance, security, and data integrity.
• Collaborate closely with frontend teams to ensure clean service boundaries and consistent system behavior. Use modern tooling and AI-assisted workflows to improve API development, testing, and documentation.

Database Design & Optimization

• Design and optimize relational databases to support high-performance and scalable applications. Ensure schemas, queries, and indexing strategies support complex workloads and evolving product needs.
• Identify and resolve performance bottlenecks using observability tools and modern diagnostics, including AI-assisted analysis when appropriate.

Platform Performance & Engineering Productivity

• Own initiatives that improve platform performance, reliability, and overall engineering prod