Principal Engineer, Platform & Architecture

Who we are:

Founded in 2013, Ignition is the leading revenue generation platform for accounting and professional services businesses to spark greater efficiency and profitability.
Ignition automates and optimizes proposals, billing, payments and workflows in a single platform that fits seamlessly into existing technology stacks.

With a vision to transform how professional services and their clients do business together, Ignition empowers 7,250+ businesses to reach their full revenue potential.

To date, Ignition customers have engaged over 1.7 million clients and generated US $8b in revenue via the platform. 

Ignition’s global workforce spans Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the Philippines, US and the UK.

Company Values:

• We are better everyday
• We work without ego
• We are smarter together
• We hero our customer

Role location:

We welcome candidates from Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane who have full work rights. We have fully adopted hybrid work arrangements, allowing you the option to work from home, a shared workspace, or a combination of both.

About the role:

We’re looking for a seasoned Principal Engineer to shape the long-term technical strategy of our platform and engineering team. This role blends deep architectural expertise with cross-functional influence and mentorship, ensuring engineering decisions align with product direction and business goals.

You’ll work closely with the VP of Engineering, senior engineers, and product leadership to define and evolve the technical roadmap while enabling scalable product delivery. You'll also act as a trusted advisor, supporting senior engineers as they grow into confident system owners and technical leaders.

Success in this role comes from empowering others—offering the right context, support, and shared understanding to help teams make informed technical decisions with confidence.

  What your day to day will look like:

• Work with the VP of Engineering to refine and communicate a technical strategy for the platform that keeps teams moving forward today while ensuring the platform evolves with the business.
• Partner with product and engineering leaders to shape the technical roadmap, balancing product goals, technical investments, and delivery speed
• Translate long-term product direction into actionable technical insights, so teams can make decisions with clarity, not guesswork
• Support teams in making smart architectural choices that align with the broader platform, giving them flexibility without enforcing rigid rules
• Jump into key architectural discussions, design reviews, and deep technical dives, ensuring platform-wide implications and long-term maintainability are factored in
• Help connect the dots across frontend, backend, and platform decisions, ensuring architecture evolves as a cohesive system, not a collection of disconnected parts
• Coach and mentor senior engineers and tech leads, strengthening their architectural mindset and growing their ability to own complex systems
• Identify and elevate critical technical risks, dependencies, and opportunities, ensuring the right conversations happen at the right level
• Keep teams aligned by sharing patterns, lessons learned, and best practices, helping engineers build smarter, not just faster

What you need to succeed:

• 15+ years of experience in software engineering, with 5+ years in leadership roles (e.g., Staff Engineer, Principal Engineer, Architect), influencing technical direction and scaling both teams and platform
• Proven ability to align technical decisions with product and business goals, working closely with engineering leadership and product teams to balance immediate priorities with long-term evolution
• Deep expertise in both backend and frontend systems, with experience designing scalable, modular architectures that foster consistency across teams
• Strong technical judgment, helping teams navigate complex trade-offs while staying hands-on in architecture reviews and key technical initiatives
• A leadership approach that enables teams, strengthens engineering culture, and fosters alignment—without centralizing control
• Exceptional facilitation and communication skills, mentoring senior engineers, surfacing risks early, and keeping technical discussions focused and productive

Our stack:

• Ruby/Rails modular monolith (using our own framework inspired by DDD)
• TypeScript/React SPA (managed by Nx), Chakra-UI, react-hook-form, Zod
• GraphQL (Apollo Client), Sidekiq/GoodJob for background processing
• CI/CD using RSpec, Jest, Cypress, Buildkite
• AWS (EKS, RDS/Postgres, CloudFront, S3), Redis

Why join us:

Join our global SaaS scale-up company where we foster a collaborative, open, and transparent culture and work without ego. Our team comprises curious and intelligent colleagues who embrace challenges. Here's what we offer:

• Employee stock options from day one
• 20 days of accrued annual leave/vacation plus 10 wellbeing days to prioritize yourself and your loved ones
• Additional paid day off to celebrate your birthday, along with volunteering leave
• Annual education allowance reimbursement to support your professional development
• Employee recognition program
• Quarterly wellness allowance to invest in your personal wellness
• Paid subscriptions to Headspace and LifeWorks EAP & Wellbeing Platform
• Flexible working arrangements, supported by WFH reimbursement and technology allowance to ensure your safety while working from home
• Personal tax return assistance (since we're in the accounting business!)
• Paid parental leave

Please consider applying, even if you don’t tick all the boxes. Research has shown that candidates from underrepresented minority groups often only apply for roles where they meet all the detailed criteria.  Experience comes in many forms, and skills are transferable. We are committed to adding diverse perspectives to our teams and encourage everyone to apply if interested.

Ignition is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.

Ignition is proud to provide employment and recruitment accommodations during the recruitment process. Once our team reviews your resume and contacts you if there is a fit, we will work with you to meet your accessibility needs. For any questions, suggestions or required documents regarding accessibility in a different format, please contact [email protected]