Principal Engineer

Principal Engineer

Terrific • LATAM • Contract, Remote

About Terrific

Terrific Live is a social commerce platform that helps retailers and eCommerce brands grow revenue through live, interactive, social-native shopping experiences on their own websites. Our platform connects audiences and shop presenters in real time — streaming to global brands, retailers, and media groups across Latin America, Europe, and Israel — and turns live moments into measurable sales.

We’re hiring a Principal Engineer to set the technical direction of the platform, raise the engineering bar, and help us scale a 24/7, high-availability, AI-powered product to the next order of magnitude.

The Role

The Principal Engineer is our most senior individual contributor - a force-multiplier across the entire engineering organization. You’ll own architecture and technical strategy for Terrific’s platform end-to-end: real-time live video commerce, AI/ML-driven personalization, commerce integrations, data infrastructure, and everything in between.

You’ll stay deeply hands-on — writing code, reviewing designs, and shipping critical systems — while also shaping how the team builds: standards, patterns, performance, and reliability. You’ll partner closely with the R&D managers, Product manager, and Design on the hardest, highest-leverage problems.

What You’ll Do

Technical Leadership

• Own the end-to-end architecture of the Terrific platform across backend, frontend, data, AI,  and real-time systems.

• Drive engineering standards - code quality, testing, observability, security, and operational excellence - and raise the bar across the team.

• Mentor engineers; grow the technical depth of the organization.

• Design and implement new services and features end-to-end, from database to UI, with high performance and responsiveness.

• Build rapid prototype features A to Z.

• Tackle the highest-risk, highest-impact problems personally - live video reliability, real-time engagement, commerce integrations, and AI-powered experiences.

• Evolve our stack thoughtfully: React, Angular, Node.js, TypeScript, GCP, Firebase, Firestore, Cloud Functions, BigQuery, and Pub/Sub.

• Architect for global, 24/7 live operation — uptime, latency, cost, and graceful degradation during peak live events.

• Build for B2B2C scale: systems that serve enterprise customers (brands, retailers, broadcasters) and their consumer audiences across multiple regions and languages.

• Partner with Product and Data on experimentation infrastructure so every meaningful change can be A/B tested and measured.

• Partner with Product and Design from concept through launch, taking full ownership in a fast-paced, collaborative environment.

• Represent engineering with strategic customers and partners on deep technical topics; translate customer reality into architectural decisions.

• Make the whole team better - through design reviews, technical writing, mentorship, and hiring.

What We’re Looking For

• 10+ years of hands-on software engineering experience, with a track record of leading at staff/principal level at high-scale products(!).

• Expert-level Node.js and TypeScript; strong frontend experience in React and/or Angular (both a significant plus).

• Deep experience designing and operating distributed, real-time systems in production, 24/7, under load.

• Strong data engineering instincts: SQL/NoSQL, event-driven architectures, and analytical stores (BigQuery or equivalent).

• Hands-on experience building or shipping AI/ML-powered features in production - personalization, recommendations, search, or generative AI.

• Experience on GCP (Firebase, Cloud Functions, Firestore, Realtime Database, Pub/Sub) is a strong advantage.

• Experience with commerce platforms such as Shopify or WooCommerce, and/or live video/streaming infrastructure, is a plus.

• Excellent judgment on trade-offs between scope, speed, performance, and UX; strong product intuition.

• Clear, calm communicator: writes well, pushes back thoughtfully, and makes the people around them more effective.

Why Terrific

• Principal-level ownership of the platform that defines live, shoppable media.

• Real, global scale — top brands, retailers, and broadcasters, running 24/7 across LatAm, Europe, and Israel.

• A modern stack (Node.js, TypeScript, React, Angular, GCP, Firebase, BigQuery, Pub/Sub) with the autonomy to evolve it.

• A tight, senior team where product, design, data, and engineering ship together

 

Be part of the change that’s quietly reshaping how people discover and buy online.
Passionate about social media and e-commerce? Come build what’s next at Terrific.