Principal Software Developer

Founded and based in Richmond, BC, Ideon Technologies uses the energy from supernova explosions in space to image deep beneath the Earth’s surface. The world pioneer in cosmic-ray muon tomography, Ideon has developed the REVEAL™ Subsurface Intelligence Platform™, comprising an advanced suite of proprietary data-generation hardware, software, AI-powered services, and multi-physics fusion that provide x-ray-like visibility deep underground and unlock the exponential power of integrated spatial data.

By transforming muon data into reliable 3D density maps, Ideon helps geologists identify, map, characterize, and monitor mineral deposits with confidence. This reduces risk and cost of traditional methods, while saving time, optimizing return, and minimizing environmental impact across the mining value chain. In turn, this is helping accelerate the world’s transition to low-impact mining and transform how companies recover the critical minerals required to power the global shift to clean energy – improving peoples’ lives and enhancing economic prosperity.

We are a dynamic tech scale-up of 80 employees (and growing!), and a team that is entrepreneurial by nature and focused on doing things right to deliver great customer outcomes. We are committed to seeking out the best brains and the most exceptional humans, wherever they come from and however they happen to be packaged.

The Role

We’re seeking a Principal Software Developer to report to the Director, Software Engineering and collaborate closely with software developers, data scientists, geoscientists, applied scientists, and DevOps. This is a hands-on individual contributor role.

Ideon’s software engineering team has grown significantly, with strong senior developers building complex systems across cloud platforms, scientific compute, data pipelines, and customer-facing products. As we enter our next growth phase, we’re expanding into new domains such as AI-enabled workflows, intelligent automation, and large-scale compute platforms.

This role will help guide critical technical decisions as we scale 2x–5x, challenging assumptions, shaping architecture, and supporting teams to make better decisions earlier. You’ll also contribute to AI-first practices, engineering standards, and scalable platform design—using deep technical expertise, strong judgment, and influence through execution.

You will impact and drive Ideon’s objectives forward by focusing on the following activities:

Hands-On Technical Leadership • Act as a senior technical contributor, partnering with teams to solve complex problems and guide critical decisions. • Spend hands-on time in the codebase, focusing on high-risk, high-impact areas and building prototypes or proofs-of-concept to de-risk architecture. • Support software developers through design, optimization, and debugging, helping teams make strong decisions early and move faster with less rework.

Architecture & Platform Design • Lead architectural design and platform evolution across APIs, distributed systems, data pipelines, and cloud infrastructure, ensuring alignment with business priorities. • Establish reusable patterns and reference architectures to scale development and reduce duplication across teams. • Drive pragmatic build vs. buy decisions and document key architectural tradeoffs to strengthen institutional knowledge.

Compute Systems & AI-First Engineering • Own and evolve architecture for large-scale compute systems, including distributed workloads, scheduling, and optimization across CPU, memory, and GPU. • Evaluate and guide adoption of HPC and distributed technologies (e.g., Ray, Dask, Kubernetes, Azure HPC) to support scalable compute platforms. • Apply an AI-first mindset, identifying how AI and automation can shape architecture, improve engineering productivity, and unlock new product capabilities.

Strategic Partnership & Influence • Contribute to Ideon's broader software engineering strategy: participating in planning cycles, roadmap reviews, and strategic discussions with leadership.

Success in the role looks like: • Faster, higher-quality technical decisions, with clear tradeoffs and reduced rework. • Scalable, well-architected systems and platforms that support growth and increase team velocity. • Reliable, efficient compute systems and thoughtful integration of AI-first practices, with strong technical leadership demonstrated through hands-on impact.

Priorities in the first few months will include: • Build a deep understanding of Ideon’s systems and architectural challenges while establishing credibility through hands-on contribution. • Partner with senior engineers to identify high-impact areas and contribute to key technical initiatives and decisions. • Identify opportunities to improve system design, developer experience, and platform consistency.

Qualifications

Must-haves – You’ll need the following to move forward in the hiring process (and be successful in the role). • Education: Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent combination of training and experience. • 12+ years of professional software development experience, including 3+ years operating in senior technical leadership roles as a Staff, Principal, Lead, or Architect-level individual contributor. • Strong backend expertise (e.g., Python, Go, Java, C#) and hands-on experience building cloud-native systems in Azure or similar environments. • Deep experience with distributed systems, APIs, and platform engineering practices. • Background in HPC or large-scale compute workloads, including CPU-, memory-, and GPU-intensive systems. • Proven ability to influence teams through technical depth, execution, and experience with containers, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and infrastructure-as-code. • Proven ability to influence engineering teams through technical depth, credibility, and execution. • Well-developed communication skills in English at a fluent or professional level; able to be assertive and respectful. • Legally able and currently documented to work full time hours in Canada.

We also look for the following from all new Ideon team members: • Experience in or excitement for working in a tech scale-up; happy to wear a few hats and adjust on the fly. • An ambitious, can-do attitude; you get that we’re doing challenging work and are excited to dive in. • Enthusiastic and confident to take initiative and be adaptable in an agile, fast-paced environment. • Solid teamwork skills; you’re accountable to yourself and your team and will jump in to help where you can. • Creative solutioning mindset with great problem-solving skills. • Insatiable curiosity paired with a drive to deliver. • Able to work well under pressure and to meet committed deadlines. • Great interpersonal skills; able to build relationships with colleagues, customers, and external stakeholders. • Able to contribute something “extra” to our culture beyond the work that you do, like wowing people with your home-baked goods, sharing improv comedy skills, or organizing sports games.

Nice-to-haves – While it would be nice if you had some of the below, we’re happy to train, coach and share our experience. • Experience deploying and operating AI/ML systems in production environments. • Familiarity with agentic AI, LLM orchestration, MCP servers, or developer-focused AI tooling. • Experience with GPU-accelerated computing, CUDA, or optimizing scientific workloads. • Exposure to domains such as geoscience, industrial systems, hardware-software integration, or scientific applications.

More Role Details

Location: Ideon’s office is located at #150 - 4611 Viking Way in Richmond, British Columbia, Canada.

This is a hybrid role. We love seeing folks in the office 2+ times a week; you’re welcome to work from home the remainder of the week or come into the office all 5 days if you prefer. Our “be an adult” approach means you have the flexibility to determine your in-office schedule while factoring in the positive impact of face-to-face connection and communication with your leader and teammates.

During your first few months, it’s anticipated you’ll spend more time in the office to support role-specific onboarding and relationship building.

Hours of work: 8 hrs/day, M-F. Typical working hours are 9AM-5PM-ish pacific time; some employees shift slightly earlier or later based on business and personal needs. As Ideon is a high technology company, you may be asked to be flexible with your hours due to business requirements.

What We Offer

Salary: The annual salary range for this role, in Canadian dollars, is $135,000 - $190,000. Early equity option allocations upon hire plus the opportunity to earn performance-based option allocations annually are also highlights of our total rewards package. • An opportunity to work with a dynamic tech scale-up. You will contribute to advancing a ground-breaking solution that generates significant economic and environmental benefit. • Financial support for accreditation membership, exams, continuing professional development (i.e. P.Eng, P.Geo, CPA) • Tuition support ($2500/year). • Extended health and dental benefits, employee assistance program, and health/personal spending accounts to cover things that may not fall into other categories (i.e. exercise classes, transit, daycare, pet insurance). • Minimum 3 weeks paid time off to start, including an annual paid closure between the Christmas and New Year’s stat holidays. • 5 paid sick days + other leaves per employment standards legislation. • For hybrid/remote roles, 2 weeks/year work-from-almost-anywhere. • Parental leave top-up. • Employee referral bonus. • Casual dress – we like our jeans and hoodies. • Free parking & tasty snacks at the office! • While we work hard, we also sprinkle social events and learning opportunities into our days.

Ideon’s salary ranges are set by role and level, benchmarked against similarly sized Vancouver-area companies. Most new hires start below the top of the range, unless their experience significantly exceeds role requirements. You’ll be asked to share your salary expectations during the application process.