Principal Software Engineer

About Topsort

At Topsort, we believe in the mission of democratizing the secret technologies of the walled gardens and creating a privacy-first cookie-free world of clean advertising with modern tech, friendly products, and AI. We believe in making advertising intuitive, intelligent, and genuinely cool, without any of the creepy ads or cookie-obsession (well, maybe just the chocolate ones). In a rapidly changing industry, we're on a mission to democratize monetization access for all and ensure that advertising doesn't leave any brand or seller feeling confused or overwhelmed

Today, Topsort has 6 major hubs worldwide, and employees in 13+ countries, including Menlo Park, Boston, Santiago Chile, Sao Paulo Brazil, Barcelona Spain, and Sydney Australia. We are a truly global company that was born in the pandemic that’s had rapid growth since out of a genius product, a customer-first mentality, and a hardworking team of talented individuals. Since our founding in 2021, we’ve gained customers in retail, marketplaces, and delivery apps in 40+ countries and quickly approaching the #1 position in the industry.

Do you enjoy a fast-paced environment? Do you like seeing your work create real-time impact, being part of a rocket ship from the very beginning? Let’s do the unimaginable - let’s make ads clean and cool again, with AI and modern technology. 

Why Topsort? Why now?

Topsort is changing the way Retail Media works. By joining our scaling team, you'll feel your impact from day 1. The processes and messaging you build today will be a critical part of our foundation as we accelerate toward 200 Topsorters worldwide, and your innovations will leave a lasting mark on the industry, as a whole. Retail Media is on the verge of a new era, and Topsort is gathering the ecosystem together to shape a brighter future. Joining us now, you'll work directly alongside our co-founders and founding members to bring on Retail Media 3.0. If you're looking to define your career as something greater than yourself, come scale with us.

What it’s like to work at Topsort

Our team is all about straightforward communication, embracing feedback without taking it personally, and fostering a super collaborative environment. It’s a sports team that’s hyper focused on winning, collaborative internally, and competitive externally - never the other way around. We thrive on working in the open, lifting each other up, and getting things done with a sense of urgency. We're the kind of team that loves making bold choices, sharing extraordinary opinions, and maintaining a 100 mph pace. No endless meetings here – if it can be done today, we're all about getting it done today.

About this role

We're looking for a Principal Software Engineer to lead the technical vision, architecture, and execution of Topsort's Catalog Platform. This is our highest individual contributor engineering role, responsible for defining how product catalogs, merchant data, inventory signals, and advertising intelligence flow through our platform at global scale.

You will work across infrastructure, data, machine learning, product, and engineering teams to build the systems that power retail media for some of the world's fastest-growing marketplaces and retailers. This role is not just about writing code—it's about making foundational technical decisions that shape the future of the company.

As a Principal Software Engineer, you'll be expected to operate as a force multiplier across the entire engineering organization, setting technical standards, mentoring senior engineers, and solving the hardest architectural challenges.

You will

• Own the long-term technical vision and architecture for Topsort's Catalog Platform.
• Design and build highly scalable distributed systems that process millions of products, inventory updates, and catalog events.
• Define data models, platform standards, APIs, and system interfaces that enable rapid product development.
• Lead technical decision-making for performance, reliability, scalability, and security across catalog infrastructure.
• Partner closely with Product, Data Science, and Engineering leadership to translate business strategy into technical execution.
• Drive large cross-functional initiatives that span multiple engineering teams.
• Identify bottlenecks before they become problems and proactively improve platform resilience.
• Establish engineering best practices around system design, observability, testing, and operational excellence.
• Mentor senior and staff-level engineers through design reviews, architecture discussions, and technical leadership.
• Raise the overall engineering bar by influencing technical culture and execution across the organization.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and AI-driven development approaches that can create leverage across the engineering team.
• Serve as a trusted technical advisor to leadership on platform strategy and future investments.

What we think you need to be successful

• 8+ years of software engineering experience building large-scale distributed systems.
• Deep expertise in backend architecture, data-intensive systems, and platform engineering.
• Proven track record designing systems that operate at high scale with strong reliability requirements.
• Strong experience with cloud infrastructure and modern distributed architectures.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity and make sound technical decisions with incomplete information.
• Demonstrated experience leading complex technical initiatives without direct management authority.
• Strong understanding of data modeling, event-driven architectures, APIs, and platform design.
• Exceptional communication skills and ability to influence engineers, product leaders, and executives.
• A systems-thinking mindset—you optimize for long-term leverage, not short-term fixes.
• High ownership and accountability for outcomes.
• Passion for mentoring and elevating the people around you.
• Comfortable operating in a fast-moving startup environment where priorities evolve quickly.

• Deep dive into details: Professionals who are not content with superficial answers and dive deeply into the details to uncover root causes and optimal solutions.
• Team first: A low need for individual recognition, always prioritizing collective results over personal credit.
• You thrive with ambiguity: Exceptional ability to tackle open-ended problems in unstructured environments, turning chaos into structured innovation.
• Adaptability: Willingness to learn, mentor, lead, and follow as the situation demands, fostering growth at all levels.
• Urgency: A disproportionate sense of urgency in execution, while keeping scalability and the creation of replicable processes in mind to ensure long-term success.
• Curiosity: Genuinely curious individuals who can quickly learn difficult concepts and apply them effectively.