What is the opportunity?

As a Principal Engineer within RBC’s Innovation & Technology team, you will act as a senior technical leader, guiding a high-performing team of backend engineers and shaping the technical strategy for next-generation solutions across multiple innovation initiatives. You will provide hands-on architecture and engineering leadership, influence enterprise-level decision-making, and ensure delivery of secure, scalable, and compliant backend solutions integrated into RBC’s platforms.

What will you do?

Technical Leadership & Mentorship

• Lead and grow a team of backend engineers with deep Java expertise and strong

• delivery capabilities.

• Champion engineering excellence by fostering a culture of craftsmanship, ownership, and continuous improvement.

• Conduct regular performance coaching, technical reviews, and learning sessions.

• Balance near-term execution with long-term strategic capability building and talent development.

Engineering Execution & Automation

• Enforce best practices in software development, including clean code principles,

• design patterns, and secure coding standards.

• Drive test automation strategies across unit, integration, and E2E layers using JUnit, Mockito, REST-assured, etc.

• Oversee CI/CD pipelines using tools such as Jenkins, GitHub Actions

• Lead containerization efforts with Docker, Kubernetes, and OpenShift, ensuring robust deployment pipelines.

• Define and implement observability standards using Splunk, ELK, Prometheus, and OpenTelemetry.

Architecture & Platform Strategy

• Own and evolve the backend architecture for innovation projects, aligning with RBC’s enterprise architecture standards.

• Facilitate technical design reviews and present solutions at the Enterprise Architecture Review Board (EARB).

• Identify reusable components and enable cross-project technical synergies across innovation teams.

• Balance innovation velocity with RBC’s governance, security, and regulatory requirements.

AI-Driven Engineering & Developer Productivity

• Champion adoption of agentic AI tools to enhance developer efficiency, code

• generation, testing, and documentation.

• Evaluate and integrate AI copilots (e.g., GitHub Copilot, CodeWhisperer, Tabnine) and other productivity tools.

• Define RBC-safe usage patterns and best practices for GenAI tools in secure enterprise environments.

• Stay abreast of evolving AI capabilities in software development and share thought leadership internally.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Work closely with product managers to define technical requirements that align with business priorities.

• Partner with delivery leads and scrum masters to plan sprints, manage backlogs, and deliver on roadmaps.

• Collaborate with security, compliance, privacy, and legal to ensure adherence to RBC policies and standards.

• Liaise with DevOps, Cloud, and SRE teams to optimize platform capabilities and developer experience.

• Facilitate integration and alignment with frontend, iOS, Android, and data science teams.

Platform Vision & Continuous Improvement

• Lead technical debt reduction efforts and modernization of legacy systems.

• Promote platform thinking – enable reuse, scalability, and standardization across

• solutions.

• Introduce internal tools, APIs, and SDKs to streamline onboarding and delivery across the innovation portfolio.

What do you need to succeed?

Must have:

• Expert-level backend development experience with Java (Spring Boot, REST APIs, multithreading, messaging).

• Secondary proficiency in Python and scripting for automation, prototyping, or AI tools.

• Proven experience building microservices and cloud-native applications on platforms like AWS, GCP, or Azure.

• Solid knowledge of container orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift).

• Advanced understanding of CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, and GitOps workflows.

• Familiarity with modern identity and access management (e.g. OAuth2, JWT, mTLS, etc.).

• Experience with SQL and NoSQL databases, data modeling, and caching strategies.

• Strong experience navigating enterprise governance, compliance, and regulatory frameworks.

• Exposure to RBC systems, such as enterprise authentication (CyberArk, ForgeRock), OpenShift clusters, and observability platforms, is a strong asset.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills with the ability to influence technical and non-technical stakeholders.

What’s in it for you?

We thrive on the challenge to be our best, progressive thinking to keep growing, and working together to deliver trusted advice to help our clients thrive and communities prosper. We care about each other, reaching our potential, making a difference to our communities, and achieving success that is mutual.

• Ability to make a difference and lasting impact

• Work in a dynamic, collaborative, progressive, and high-performing team

• Opportunities to do challenging work

Job Skills

Application Development, Application Maintenance, Applications Architecture, Commercial Acumen, Enterprise Application Delivery, Information Technology Management, Information Technology Trends, Programming Languages, System Applications

Additional Job Details

RBC WATERPARK PLACE, 88 QUEENS QUAY W:TORONTOTORONTOCanada37.5Full timePERSONAL & COMMERCIAL BANKINGRegularSalaried2025-06-302025-08-11

Note: Applications will be accepted until 11:59 PM on the day prior to the application deadline date above

Inclusion and Equal Opportunity Employment

At RBC, we believe an inclusive workplace that has diverse perspectives is core to our continued growth as one of the largest and most successful banks in the world. Maintaining a workplace where our employees feel supported to perform at their best, effectively collaborate, drive innovation, and grow professionally helps to bring our Purpose to life and create value for our clients and communities. RBC strives to deliver this through policies and programs intended to foster a workplace based on respect, belonging and opportunity for all.