Principal Engineer (LATAM)

See something that should exist? Build it.
See a better way? Do it.

At Terrific , every role directly impacts how we grow from product to revenue to customer experience. We’re building the next generation of social commerce through live shopping powered by real-time data and AI.

And we believe customer data should belong to the brands who earn it — not third-party platforms.

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

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

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

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Mentor engineers; grow the technical depth of the organization.

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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What We’re Looking For

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

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

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

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

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Hands-on experience building or shipping AI/ML-powered features in production - personalization, recommendat