Posted 3 days ago
Principal System Engineer
@ Backbase
Toronto, Ontario
Overview
Backbase is hiring a Principal System Engineer to set technical direction, drive platform reliability and resilience, and mentor engineering teams in a highly regulated banking environment. The work covers self-managed Kubernetes on Azure, Istio service mesh, DevSecOps pipelines, incident response and compliance with PCI-DSS, GDPR, SOC 2 and ISO 27001.
Responsibilities:
- Architect and operate self-managed Kubernetes on Azure
- Drive reliability, SRE practices and P0/P1 incident response
- Build compliance-aligned CI/CD pipelines and enforce security gates
- Implement security controls and meet PCI-DSS, GDPR, SOC 2 and ISO 27001
- Mentor engineers and conduct architecture and secure code reviews
Requirements summary:
- Expert self-managed Kubernetes and Azure production experience
- Expert Istio service mesh and DNS management
- Java and Spring Boot performance tuning with JVM expertise
- Deep PKI and certificate lifecycle knowledge
- Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry and logging stack expertise
- Professional fluency in written and spoken English
Tools & skills
Source and dates
Employer career site / ATS feed · greenhouse
- Employer posting date
- 2026-11-03
- First seen by our source
- 2026-11-03
- Source record updated
- 2026-11-03
These dates describe the source record, not a live verification that the employer is still hiring. Check the original posting.
Job details
| Seniority | Senior |
| Department | Software development |
| Work setting | Office, Home |
| Position | Mostly sitting |
| Physical demands | physical low · computer high |
| Languages | English |
Summary and details written by AI from the posting; the employer’s posting is the authority.
Backbase
Saved company profile
Historical company information from a saved The Jobs API profile (LinkedIn/Crunchbase fields). It is not live-verified; figures may have changed. Missing values remain unknown.
The AI-native Banking OS where customers, employees, and AI agents work as one across channels and operations.
Full company description
Backbase built the AI-native Banking OS - the operating system that turns fragmented banking operations into a Unified Frontline. Customers, employees, and AI agents work as one across digital channels, front-office, and operations. 120+ leading banks run on Backbase across Retail, SMB & Commercial, Private Banking, and Wealth Management. Backbase was founded in 2003 by Jouk Pleiter and is headquartered in Amsterdam, with teams across North America, Europe, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, Africa and Latin America.
- LinkedIn followers
- 236,785
- People associated on LinkedIn
- 2,138
- Reported office locations
- Oosterdoksstraat 114, Amsterdam, North Holland 1011 DK, NL
- 1201 Peachtree St NE, Building 400, 900, Atlanta, Georgia 30309, US
- 81 Farringdon Street, London, England, GB
- The Bonded Warehouse, Atlantic Wharf, Cardiff, Cardiff CF10 4HE, GB
- 3 Church Street, Level 25 Samsung Hub, Singapore, 049483, SG
- 802 W Bannock St, Boise, Idaho 83702, US
- Sarphatistraat 370, Amsterdam, North-Holland 1018GW, NL
- 140 Yonge St, Ste 301,, Toronto, Ontario M5C1X6, CA
- Marina Plaza - Level 9, Dubai Marina, Dubai, AE
- Boulevard Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel Hidalgo, Mexico City 11520, MX
- Edifício Tarumã, Av. das Nações Unidas, 6º andar Chácara Santo Antônio (Zona Sul), Sao Paulo, 04794-000, BR
- Business categories
- Mobile Apps
- Banking
- Software
- Enterprise Software
- SaaS
- FinTech
- Developer Tools
- Financial Services
- Other recorded names
- Backbase
- Specialties
- Banking Operating System
- Banking-as-a-Service
- Journey Orchestration
- Banking Cloud
- Banking Modernization
- Engagement Banking
- Onboarding & Account Opening
- Digital Banking
- Digital Onboarding
- Digital Lending
- Loan Origination
- Digital Investing
- Core Modernization
- Omni-channel Banking
- and Whitelabel Banking Platform
- Profile identifies a recruitment agency
- No
- Reported total investment
- 127,434,666
Currency and observation date were not supplied; this is not a current valuation or a funding round.
Backbase built the AI-native Banking OS - the operating system that turns fragmented banking operations into a Unified Frontline. Customers, employees, and AI agents work as one across digital channels, front-office, and operations. 120+ leading banks run on Backbase across Retail, SMB & Commercial, Private Banking, and Wealth Management. Backbase was founded in 2003 by Jouk Pleiter and is headquartered in…
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Industry | Financial Services |
| Company size | 1,001-5,000 employees |
| Headquarters | Amsterdam, North Holland |
| Organization type | Privately Held |
| Year founded | 2003 |
| Specialties | Banking Operating SystemBanking-as-a-ServiceJourney OrchestrationBanking CloudBanking ModernizationEngagement BankingOnboarding & Account OpeningDigital BankingDigital OnboardingDigital Lending |
| Open jobs on Jobsy | 4 |
| View page |
Principal System Engineer
About the Role We are seeking a seasoned, hands-on Principal System Engineer to act as a technical vanguard and drive engineering excellence across our organization. Operating in a highly regulated banking environment, you will be the driving force behind our strategic technical direction, platform reliability, and system resilience. This is an influential role where you will balance the hands-on resolution of complex, cross-layer challenges with proactive architectural innovation. You will mentor engineering teams, foster cross-departmental collaboration, and ensure our distributed systems meet the absolute highest standards of compliance, security, and performance.
What You Will Do
Architect & Operate at Scale: Design, build, and maintain highly available infrastructure using self-managed Kubernetes on Azure. You will manage distributed architectures, stateful sets, database configurations, and advanced resilience patterns (circuit breakers, Istio traffic shifting).
Drive Reliability & SRE Practices: Anticipate operational bottlenecks, define error budgets, conduct chaos engineering, and implement proactive scaling policies. You will own P0/P1 incident management from rapid cross-layer triage through to blameless Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and permanent mitigation.
Champion DevSecOps & Automation: Build and manage automated, compliance-aligned CI/CD pipelines utilizing GitHub Actions, ArgoCD (GitOps), and Helm. You will enforce strict quality and security gates (SonarQube, Dependency-Track) and champion Infrastructure as Code (Terraform).
Ensure Enterprise Security & Compliance: Navigate stringent financial regulations (PCI-DSS, GDPR, SOC 2, ISO 27001) by embedding secure SDLC processes. You will implement least privilege access (RBAC), mTLS, secret management (Azure Key Vault), network segmentation, and robust audit trails.
Lead & Mentor: Advocate for technical standards, conduct architecture and secure code reviews, and actively mentor other system engineers. You will act as a calm, authoritative technical voice during outages and serve as a strategic consultant to both technical and business stakeholders.
What You Bring to the Team
Cloud Native Mastery: Expert-level production experience with self-managed Kubernetes, Azure services, advanced Linux systems administration, and deep network routing/troubleshooting.
Service Mesh & Networking: Expert configuration and operation of Istio Service Mesh (traffic management, mTLS, fault injection) and deep proficiency in DNS management (A, CNAME, SRV, SPF, DKIM).
Java & Performance Tuning: Strong ability to read, modify, and optimize Java/Spring Boot microservices. You bring hands-on expertise in JVM memory tuning, heap sizing, and Garbage Collection (GC) analysis within containerized limits.
PKI & Security: Deep practical knowledge of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), certificate lifecycles, revocation, and security enforcement across distributed environments.
Comprehensive Observability: Expertise utilizing Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, and logging stacks (Loki/ELK) to drive data-informed platform stability.
Systematic Debugging: Proven ability to dive deep into complex outages using distributed tracing, JVM debugging (heap/thread dumps), and infrastructure tools (kubectl, Envoy logs).
Communication: Professional fluency in written and spoken English, with the presence and clarity to explain complex technical remediation to developers, security auditors, and executive management.
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