Technical Lead

Purpose Financial

$100K — $130K *
Technical Services
Less than 5 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Experience leading and developing software engineers, adept at providing constructive feedback.
  • Deep expertise in building and shipping production systems, particularly with distributed systems and Python.
  • Ability to communicate complex technical concepts clearly to both technical teams and executives under pressure.
  • Hands-on experience with AI-assisted development tools and integrating AI into team workflows.

Responsibilities

  • Foster squad growth by mentoring engineers to enhance their technical skills and independence.
  • Define and guide architectural direction for systems design and integration.
  • Translate technical requirements into business language alongside your Product Manager, ensuring alignment on priorities.
  • Oversee the end-to-end delivery of your squad's roadmap, breaking down complex initiatives into actionable tasks.
  • Continuously improve squad operations by implementing effective processes and workflows.

Benefits

  • Work in a culture that emphasizes innovation, courage, and accountability for team outcomes.
  • Join a team that values client focus and actively seeks collective growth and improvement opportunities.
  • Enjoy the autonomy to make architectural decisions and influence team practices.
  • Collaborate in an environment where engineering thinking is valued alongside code quality.
Full Job Description
Vacancy Status: This is for a current vacancy

Job Description

Who you are

This role exists to make one squad extraordinary - technically sharper, more ambitious, and more impactful than they thought possible. You own the technical direction of your squad: growing engineers into their best work, setting the architectural standard, and ensuring every line of code connects to a business outcome.

This is not a role where you choose between leadership and craft. You architect systems, coach engineers through hard problems, review pull requests for what they teach and not just what they ship, and then walk into a room of non-technical stakeholders and turn complexity into clarity. AI handles the routine so you can do all of this at a level that was impossible three years ago.

What AI does so you don't have to

  • Handles boilerplate generation, test scaffolding, and routine refactoring - your engineers ship faster and you review for architecture, not syntax.
  • Generates sprint analytics and dashboards - you narrate the story behind the numbers, not the numbers themselves.
  • Surfaces performance signals and PR patterns before your 1:1s - you walk in prepared to coach, not to gather context.
  • Drafts technical documentation and decision records - you add the judgment, trade-offs, and institutional context that make them useful.
  • Runs first-pass code review for standards compliance - you focus on design decisions, maintainability, and teaching moments.


What you'll drive

  • Squad growth - build engineers who develop visibly in technical depth, judgment, and ability to operate independently with AI tools.
  • Architectural direction - define how systems are designed, how components fit together, and how today's decisions create or foreclose tomorrow's options.
  • Engineering-business translation - you and your Product Manager own the backlog together; you challenge assumptions, sharpen priorities, and ensure what gets built solves the right problem.
  • Delivery and continuous improvement - own your squad's roadmap end-to-end, decompose ambiguous initiatives into work that ships, and continuously improve how the squad operates.


Qualifications: What you must bring

  • Demonstrated experience leading and developing software engineers, including giving hard feedback, navigating difficult conversations, and growing people into roles they didn't think they could fill.
  • Deep technical expertise: you've built and shipped production systems with strong foundations in system design, distributed systems, and at least one modern language (we primarily use Python).
  • Equal clarity communicating with engineers and executives - translating technical complexity into business language and vice versa, under pressure.
  • Hands-on fluency with AI-assisted development tools and a demonstrated ability to integrate AI into how a team works, not just how an individual codes.


What will set you apart

  • Experience in financial services, fintech, or wealth management in regulated environments where compliance shapes what can be built, how fast, and in what sequence.
  • A track record designing and governing AI-native architectures or deploying agentic AI systems in production.
  • Background scaling platforms in a mid-size, growing technology organization where you balanced speed with process maturity.
  • A strong point of view on what good engineering culture looks like and the courage to build it, even when it's uncomfortable.
  • You think in systems - understanding how architectural decisions create or foreclose options tomorrow.


What success looks like in your first year

  • Delivery predictability above 80%; production incidents attributed to your squad's systems decline quarter over quarter.
  • At least two engineers take on meaningfully expanded scope or responsibility within 12 months.
  • AI-assisted workflows are embedded in how your squad works, measurably improving throughput without sacrificing code quality or architectural standards.
  • Product, Design, and senior leadership actively seek your input; your squad's priorities are understood and supported cross-functionally.
  • At least one significant process, tooling, or workflow improvement you introduced is adopted and delivering measurable results.


Our Five Values

  • Innovation - Bring new ideas, challenge the status quo, and experiment without waiting for permission.
  • Courage - Speak up when something isn't working; act with conviction even when it's uncomfortable.
  • Owner's Mindset - Take full accountability for your squad's outcomes.
  • Client Focus - Place client outcomes at the center of every architectural and delivery decision.
  • Winning Through Growth - Invest in your own development and actively contribute to the team's growth.


What It's Like Here

You'll join a team that ships weekly, reviews each other's thinking as seriously as each other's code, and has real autonomy to make architectural calls. Engineering culture is built on Owner's Mindset - you own the outcome, not just the task. Applicants must be legally entitled to work in Canada; immigration sponsorship is not offered.

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