Software Engineering Team Lead

Accountabilities: Development Support Leadership: Lead the development support team responsible for production incidents, bug fixes, technical investigations, and overall platform stability. Technical Escalation and Incident Management: Serve as the primary technical escalation point for complex production issues, coordinating investigations, root cause analysis, and post-incident reviews. Hands-On Software Development: Write, maintain, and improve high-quality production code across PHP backend services and React frontend applications, following established engineering standards. Database and Application Performance: Diagnose and resolve performance issues across PHP applications, MySQL databases, REST APIs, and frontend systems, including query optimization and database indexing. Root Cause Resolution: Identify recurring incidents and implement permanent engineering solutions that prevent repeated failures rather than relying on temporary fixes. Code Quality and Reviews: Conduct code reviews focused on maintainability, performance, security, consistency, and adherence to engineering best practices. Team Mentorship and Development: Coach junior and intermediate developers, provide technical guidance, and support the team's professional growth and problem-solving capabilities. Engineering Standards: Establish and maintain coding guidelines, development standards, testing practices, and consistent approaches to software quality. Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work with Product, Operations, Customer Success, and Engineering to prioritize incidents, communicate technical risks, and align support efforts with business needs. Monitoring and Observability: Improve monitoring, logging, alerting, and debugging tools to increase visibility into system health and accelerate issue resolution. Production Deployments and Release Management: Own production deployments and support release planning to ensure reliable and controlled software delivery. Developer Productivity and Tooling: Improve internal tools and workflows to help engineers work more efficiently and resolve issues faster. Architecture and Scalability: Participate in architecture discussions and recommend improvements to application reliability, scalability, and long-term maintainability. Technical Debt Reduction: Lead continuous improvement initiatives that address legacy issues, strengthen platform health, and reduce operational risk. Documentation and Knowledge Sharing: Maintain troubleshooting guides, incident documentation, and technical knowledge resources to improve consistency and team effectiveness. First-Year Impact: Improve platform stability, reduce recurring incidents and resolution times, build a high-performing support team, strengthen observability, and use AI-assisted development tools to accelerate engineering outcomes. Requirements: Approximately 3–5 or more years of professional software development experience, with strong practical experience building and maintaining production applications. Strong proficiency in PHP and experience developing, debugging, and supporting backend applications in production environments. Solid knowledge of MySQL, including query optimization, indexing, database performance analysis, and troubleshooting. Hands-on experience developing modern frontend applications using React, JavaScript, and HTML5. Demonstrated ability to investigate and resolve complex production issues across full-stack applications and interconnected services. Experience leading developers or technical support teams, with the ability to coordinate work, prioritize incidents, and guide technical decisions. Strong understanding of software architecture, scalable application design, system reliability, and maintainable code. Experience conducting code reviews, mentoring developers, and promoting engineering standards and best practices. Familiarity with REST APIs and troubleshooting integrations between application components and external services. Strong debugging, analytical reasoning, and problem-solving skills, especially when working under pressure or addressing time-sensitive production issues. Experience improving application monitoring, logging, alerting, and observability is an advantage. Knowledge of Docker and containerized development environments is beneficial. Experience with AWS infrastructure and cloud-based application deployment is a plus. Familiarity with message queue systems such as RabbitMQ is desirable. Understanding of CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and release management practices is beneficial. Experience working within Agile software development teams is an advantage. Exposure to eCommerce, order fulfillment, logistics, or platforms such as Shopify and Amazon is desirable. Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to collaborate across technical and non-technical teams. Strong organizational skills and the ability to balance competing priorities while maintaining high-quality execution. A proactive, accountable mindset and enthusiasm for continuous learning, experimentation, and process improvement. Benefits: Competitive salary: CAD $130,000–$135,000 annually. Comprehensive health coverage: Health and dental benefits for employees and their dependents, starting on day one. Paid time off: 15 paid vacation days annually, plus five paid wellness days. Remote-first flexibility: Work from home, with access to an optional office in downtown Toronto. Home-office support: A new MacBook and a budget for workspace accessories and peripherals. Work-from-home stipend: Financial support to help establish a comfortable and productive remote workspace. Wellness benefits: Subsidized gym membership and full coverage for a Calm app subscription. Employee Assistance Program: Access to support services designed to promote mental well-being and work-life balance. Employee discounts: Access to savings through an employee discount program. Team connection: Social events and opportunities to build relationships with colleagues. Leadership access: Direct communication with senior leadership and opportunities to influence engineering priorities. Meaningful technical impact: The chance to improve software reliability and support technology powering eCommerce fulfillment at scale. Innovation and ownership: Freedom to experiment, enhance engineering processes, improve developer tools, and lead continuous improvement initiatives. Supportive culture: A collaborative and inclusive environment that values employee development, teamwork, and long-term success.