Principal CAD Developer

About CoLab

At CoLab, we help mechanical engineering teams bring life-changing products to market years sooner.

CoLab is the AI platform for driving stronger engineering decisions. Every design review in CoLab builds a knowledge repository of design feedback, decisions, and lessons learned - which AI agents draw from to flag issues on future designs before they compound. The more your team works in CoLab, the smarter it gets and the faster you arrive at the ideal design. Companies like Ford, Komatsu, and Johnson Controls use CoLab to catch issues earlier, eliminate rework cycles, and bring products to market faster.

Founded in St. John’s, Newfoundland, CoLab has grown quickly from our first customer in 2019 to a rapidly scaling company. We’ve recently been recognized on Deloitte’s Fast 50™ and Fast 500™, and named a Canadian company to watch by The Globe and Mail and Financial Post.

About the Role

CoLab is seeking a Principal Developer to join our growing team. 

In this high-impact, hybrid role, you will work closely with our leadership team as a senior Individual Contributor (IC) and product thinker. Your primary focus will be on supporting strategic initiatives from a technical perspective.

You will help define our product roadmap by building working prototypes, pressure-testing initial assumptions, proposing potential approaches, and transforming technical unknowns into clear, actionable product direction.

Our Ideal Candidate

Our ideal candidate has previous experience working on browser-based 3D/2D graphics engines, and or Computer Aided Design (CAD) softwares, and a strong track record of applied R&D in a SaaS context.

You’re comfortable working without a clear path, and enjoy engaging with a broad set of stakeholders (product, design, leadership and customers) to clarify outcomes and validate potential solutions. You are high agency, and find ambiguous, open-ended challenges exciting.

If you’re looking for clear requirements and defined scopes that you can simply execute on, this likely won’t be the right fit.

Job Responsibilities

• Architect and prototype systems for ingesting and visualizing a variety of different engineering data
• Explore and de-risk strategic projects through rapid experimentation
• Translate deep domain knowledge into product direction and technical architecture
• Work directly with design, product leadership, and customers to validate concepts
• Identify constraints and opportunities in handling various design data

Qualifications

• Proven track record as a staff or principal-level developer in a SaaS environment
• Experience building or shaping new products or product areas, not just implementing features
• Strong ability to operate in ambiguity and define problems ahead of solving them

Extra Details

• Full-time, permanent role with competitive compensation and stock options
• Remote-first across North America
• Extended health benefits, unlimited vacation, and RRSP/ 401K matching

Equity Note

Frequently cited statistics show that people who identify with historically marginalized groups are likely to apply to jobs only if they meet 100% of the qualifications. We encourage you to help us break that statistic and apply even if you don’t meet every single qualification—your potential is what matters most to us.