About the Job
- Team leadership and development: Lead, coach, and support software developers through regular one-on-ones, feedback, career development, code reviews, and technical discussions. Build a team culture of ownership, clarity, accountability, and continuous improvement.
- Planning and resource management: Allocate software development effort across multiple product lines and platforms, including embedded systems, backend services, and user interfaces. Balance priorities, capacity, technical debt, and delivery commitments.
- Project execution: Partner with product and project managers to plan, track, and deliver concurrent software initiatives from concept through release. Help keep work moving, risks visible, and teams aligned.
- Engineering operations: Improve development workflows, release practices, CI/CD, testing, documentation, and issue tracking. Establish lightweight processes that help the team deliver more predictably without unnecessary overhead.
- Technical oversight: Guide technical direction and trade-off discussions across software architecture, hardware-software interfaces, machine control, diagnostics, and production support. You do not need to be the deepest expert in every area, but you should be able to ask good questions, identify risk, and help the team make sound decisions.
- Cross-functional collaboration: Work closely with hardware, product, manufacturing, service, and leadership teams to deliver cohesive, production-ready systems.
- Quality and reliability: Set and uphold standards for code quality, testing, observability, maintainability, and system reliability. Support diagnostics, field updates, fleet-level improvements, and production issue resolution.
- Communication and reporting: Communicate status, risks, trade-offs, and decisions clearly to engineering leadership and cross-functional stakeholders. Ensure the right people have the right level of visibility.
Working conditions
Working from the office in Waterloo at least three days per week.
About You
You are a practical software leader who enjoys helping teams operate better. You are comfortable managing people, improving process, coordinating delivery, and staying close enough to the technical work to guide decisions and remove blockers.
Qualifications
- Experience leading or managing software developers.
- Experience delivering production-grade software systems.
- Strong organizational skills and the ability to manage priorities across multiple projects.
- Experience coaching developers, giving feedback, and supporting career growth.
- Ability to communicate clearly with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
- Strong judgment around trade-offs, risk, technical debt, and delivery scope.
- Background in at least one of the following:
- Backend systems and APIs
- Embedded or hardware-adjacent software
- Full-stack application development
- Experience working in cross-disciplinary environments involving hardware, robotics, manufacturing, or physical products.
Nice to haves
- Experience with Python, Node.js, REST APIs, WebSockets, or similar backend technologies.
- Experience with React or other modern frontend frameworks.
- Experience with embedded systems, machine control, motion systems, robotics, or hardware interfaces.
- Familiarity with CI/CD, containerization, observability, deployment, and release management.
- Experience with logging, telemetry, diagnostics, fleet monitoring, or analytics.
- Experience with Git-based workflows, Jira, Asana, or similar planning tools.
- Familiarity with event-driven systems, microservices, or modular monolith architectures.
- Understanding of authentication, authorization, and secure system design.
- Experience supporting EVT, DVT, PVT, or other product development phases.
- Experience scaling teams, improving engineering process, and managing technical debt.
Why We're Awesome
- We're a scaling company - you're hired to have a voice, not to be a cog.
- Three weeks' vacation to start, plus a paid end-of-year company shutdown.
- Flexible work hours.
- Family-friendly work culture.
- Collaborative work environment.
- Located in the growing tech hub of Waterloo, Ontario, close to restaurants and easily accessible by public transit.
If this sounds like a good fit, reach out! We'd love to hear from you.
Compensation
The expected base salary range for this role is CAD $120,000-$150,000. Final compensation will be based on job-related skills, experience, and qualifications. This range reflects base pay only and does not include bonus eligibility or benefits.
Posting and application details
This posting is for an existing vacancy. Applications are reviewed by a member of our team; we do not use artificial intelligence (AI) to screen, assess, or select candidates. Selected applicants will be contacted regarding next steps.
