Principal Systems Engineer

Sectigo is the most innovative provider of certificate lifecycle management (CLM), delivering solutions that help the world’s largest brands simplify how digital trust is managed and scaled. Sectigo’s automated, cloud-native CLM platform issues and manages digital certificates across enterprise environments, enabling organizations to reduce complexity, accelerate time to value, and strengthen security across environments. Sectigo is one of the largest, longest-standing, and most reputable CAs with more than 700,000 customers, including 65% of the Fortune 500. Sectigo holds six combined active leadership seats in the CA/Browser Forum and ETSI and brings two decades of delivering unparalleled digital trust.

Simplicity at Scale.

How we show up with each other and our customers every day is just as important, and we win as #OneSectigo by living out our core values - Support, Excellence, Communication, Teamwork, Integrity, Growth and Openness. We are committed to investing in our diverse teams where everyone understands their role and how they support our strategic goals, we drive operational excellence through scale and efficiency, and we strive to delight our customers and become the market leader in our industry. If you aspire to join a driven team that holds each other accountable to meeting our lofty goals and you’d like to be part of our growth story in delivering a market leading user experience, we’d like to talk to you.

We are building next‑generation trust infrastructure and high‑performance systems that power certificate lifecycle and emerging industry trust models.

This Principal Software Engineer position is a senior, hands-on distributed systems role focused on trust infrastructure while building production-grade backend services at scale. You will work on systems that require high correctness, reliability, and operational discipline.

This role extends beyond internal development. You will collaborate across the broader ecosystem and upstream open-source projects, helping shape how modern trust infrastructure is implemented and operated in production—not just consuming it.

As our trust platform evolves alongside industry direction, this role will naturally expand across adjacent trust and security infrastructure concerns.

Who You Are

• Builder of foundational systems with strong ownership mindset.
• Comfortable operating at scale and making high-impact architectural decisions.
• Pragmatic, disciplined, and focused on production outcomes.
• Able to collaborate across teams and influence beyond organizational boundaries.

This is a full-time position, working in a hybrid model, and reporting to our Ottawa office at least 3-4 days a week. The target compensation package for this role is between CAD 130,000 and CAD 170,000, subject to internal equity and years of experience.  We may make further adjustments through an approval process if the targeted compensation range needs to be modified based on business needs and market trends.

Here are the core functions, responsibilities, and expectations for this role: 

• Design and build high-performance distributed services in Golang.
• Scale systems for certificate issuance, validation, and lifecycle operations.
• Define and deliver production-grade reliability (availability, resilience, observability).
• Drive early architecture decisions impacting scalability, failure behavior, and cost.
• Translate evolving standards into real-world, production-ready systems.
• Collaborate with ecosystem partners and contribute upstream to open-source projects.
• Ensure systems are deployable, operable, and portable beyond single environments.
• Additional tasks associated with this position may be assigned in response to company initiatives and business needs.

Education:

• Bachelor's degree in related field is strongly recommended.  Advanced degree is welcomed. 

Experience:

• Senior-level experience (Senior / Staff / Principal / Distinguished) in distributed systems or backend engineering is required.
• Strong proficiency in Golang and production service development is required.
• Deep understanding of scaling, fault tolerance, and system reliability is required.
• Experience building high-throughput, low-latency platforms is required.
• Strong discipline around production quality and operability is required.
• Working knowledge of security fundamentals and/or PKI (or ability to ramp quickly) is required.
• Experience contributing to open-source infrastructure projects is strongly preferred.
• Experience working in cross-organization or standards-driven environments is strongly preferred.
• Background in trust infrastructure, PKI, or security-critical systems is strongly preferred.
• Familiarity with large-scale data structures or transparency/log-based systems is strongly preferred.

Ideal Candidate Profiles, Talents, and Desired Qualifications:

• A highly experienced software engineer who enjoys building foundational infrastructure.
• Comfortable owning complex backend systems end‑to‑end.
• Pragmatic, disciplined, and focused on production quality.
• Interested in working in a domain that will evolve significantly over the coming years.

Sectigo is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

At Sectigo, we are committed to providing equal opportunities throughout your career. We hire and promote the most qualified individuals based on their skills, experience, job requirements, and business needs. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability, pregnancy, genetic information, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws in the countries where we operate.

Our “One Sectigo” culture fosters a strong sense of belonging and supports a respectful, inclusive workplace free from discrimination and harassment.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Our Hiring Process at Sectigo:

To enhance your experience, Sectigo may use Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools during the recruitment process. We are committed to using AI responsibly and transparently, ensuring fairness, accuracy, and human oversight at every stage.

Global team. Global reach. Global impact.

At Sectigo, we believe doing good is good business. Our strength and our success come from our team of passionate, engaged individuals who make a difference, both locally and globally. Our commitment to engagement is rooted in an unconditionally inclusive workforce, embodying our unique perspectives, heritages, and backgrounds, all as diverse as the experiences of each Sectigo employee. Importantly, we strive to be recognized not only as the CLM leader but also for our intentional efforts to promote employees into the roles that most challenge and excite them, into experiences that allow them to grow their interests as we grow the business. We are committed to bringing a little bit of fun and a whole lot of happiness into everything we do so that our work – and our team members – reflect the positive outcomes we deliver to our customers every day.