Development Lead (Back-end Systems)

AIR CANADA; Toronto; On-site; CAD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Air Canada is seeking a Development Lead to be a hands-on technical leader shaping direction, sprint execution, and delivery within an agile team. You will guide architecture, code quality, and deployment readiness, aligning with standards and business goals.

You will drive design decisions, define technical strategy, and own implementation details while mentoring teams. Join a diverse, innovative brand shaping the digital passenger experience.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or a related field.
• 5+ years of software development in production; 2–3 years in a leadership role.
• Proven ability to lead engineering teams and enforce standards.
• Hands-on expertise with React, React Native, Angular, Node.js, Java, NestJS.
• Strong REST APIs, OpenAPI/Swagger, and integration patterns.
• Experience with AWS/Azure/GCP, containers (Docker, Kubernetes), CI/CD, DevOps/DevSecOps.
• Relational and NoSQL databases; PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Cassandra.
• Excellent communication and cross-team collaboration skills.
• Punctuality and reliability in fast-paced environments.

Responsibilities

• Drive sprint commitments, execution, delivery predictability, and team outcomes.
• Lead technical solution design within approved constraints and patterns.
• Define and evolve the development team's technical strategy and practices.
• Ensure readiness for production releases with security and performance criteria.
• Mentor software engineers; promote excellence, accountability, and collaboration.
• Establish and maintain clear design specs, coding standards, and documentation.

Skills

React

React Native

Angular

Node.js

Java

NestJS

REST APIs

OpenAPI/Swagger

Cloud platforms

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD

DevOps

DevSecOps

SQL

NoSQL

PostgreSQL

MongoDB

MySQL

Cassandra

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science

Tools

MuleSoft

Apigee

IBM API Connect

IBM IIB

Tibco

Job description

Belonging to Air Canada is to belong to a Canadian symbol, Air Canada recently voted best airline in North America. Take your career to new heights by joining our innovative and diverse team at the forefront of passenger air transport.

Join Air Canada — an iconic Canadian brand and the highest-ranked airline in North America — as we continue to evolve our digital platforms to support critical operational and customer experiences.

The Development Lead is a hands‑on technical leader who sets technical direction, oversees sprint execution, and drives results within an agile development team. This role is responsible for technical solution design, delivery predictability, code quality, and deployment readiness, ensuring that solutions align with enterprise architecture, engineering standards, and business goals.

The Development Lead provides day‑to‑day technical direction through implementation coordination, coaching, and active contribution. The Development Lead is the primary implementation authority within approved architectural constraints: escalating design decisions that fall outside defined patterns and ensuring operational learnings are incorporated into the task backlog.

Let your career take flight by joining a team that is redefining the digital passenger experience and standing at the forefront of the global air transport industry.

Responsibilities

• Drive sprint commitments, day-to-day execution, delivery predictability, and team outcomes; ensure stories and tasks are well-defined, estimated, sequenced, and delivered while proactively managing scope, dependencies, technical priorities, and trade-offs.
• Break down complex requirements into clear technical tasks, analyze system interactions and dependencies, anticipate risks, and guide implementation and validation.
• Lead technical solution design and own implementation architectural decisions within approved constraints, ensuring alignment with enterprise technology standards and long-term product vision; evaluate scalability, performance, security, maintainability, and design trade-offs.
• Lead and review the development of detailed design specifications for clarity, feasibility, and alignment with overall architecture; apply approved modern patterns including microservices, serverless, and modular component-based architecture, and obtain technical lead approval for high-risk or pattern-deviating designs.
• Define and evolve the development team's technical strategy, implementation approaches, integration strategies, and engineering practices in line with enterprise standards; participate in cross-team initiatives to promote consistent technical guidelines across teams and platforms.
• Act as the primary implementation technical authority on the team; apply architectural patterns and engineering standards, make technical decisions within established constraints, and elevate to the technical lead regarding decisions affecting common services, multi-team designs, or global enterprise alignment.
• Ensure readiness for production releases, including quality criteria for testing, security, and performance, operational procedures, observability tool coverage, and fallback or mitigation plans.
• Establish, evolve, and enforce coding standards, testing frameworks, documentation practices, security controls, observability practices, and responsible AI practices to foster maintainability and scalability.
• Conduct thorough peer code reviews and merge requests, including AI-generated code; evaluate test plans and unit test scripts for accuracy, quality, reliability, security, performance, maintainability, and compliance with approved patterns.
• Actively participate in the design, development, modification, integration, maintenance, and troubleshooting of applications and services across front‑end, back‑end, cloud, and DevOps environments; lead complex or high-risk implementations and set an example by applying best practices in coding, testing, debugging, and performance optimization.
• Establish a unit testing, test automation, and AI coverage evaluation strategy to meet quality criteria and prevent defects.
• Improve integration and deployment pipelines, build and infrastructure automation, DevSecOps practices, release automation, and AI-assisted development processes to increase deployment frequency and developer productivity.
• Collaborate with product owners, QA, designers, and scrum facilitators to jointly draft user stories, define acceptance criteria, refine the task backlog, and balance technical feasibility, testability, and business priorities; foster rapid decision-making regarding scope changes.
• Own technical interventions for production issues; lead triage, investigation, debugging, mitigation, and service restoration, coordinating support from other teams and escalations as needed.
• Lead root‑cause analysis for incidents and defects belonging to the development team; contribute to post‑production performance optimization and drive corrective and preventive measures, ensuring operational learnings are integrated into the task backlog and corresponding tasks are completed.
• Establish and maintain clear, accurate, and up-to-date technical and operational documentation for new and updated software to facilitate maintenance, onboarding, and operational support.
• Monitor and improve delivery and engineering metrics, including defect rates, merge request lead times, test coverage, deployment frequency, fallback frequency, and reliability metrics; interpret code commit cadence in context alongside quality and delivery metrics to guide improvement initiatives.
• Lead and mentor software engineering teams across technology layers through pair programming, feedback, and practical guidance; foster a culture of professional rigor, accountability, continuous learning, innovation, collaboration, and psychological safety, without holding formal personnel management responsibilities.
• Foster the responsible adoption of emerging technologies, including generative AI, agentic AI systems, and AI‑assisted development tools, in compliance with approved enterprise architecture, security, and responsible AI standards.
• Clearly communicate technical concepts, design decisions, risks, and trade-offs to technical and non‑technical stakeholders to foster cross‑team alignment.

Personal Qualities

• Inspire and energize engineering teams by demonstrating high enthusiasm and fostering a culture of excellence and accountability.
• Demonstrate an innovative and forward‑looking mindset, constantly exploring emerging technologies and non‑traditional solutions to tackle complex challenges.
• Establish and maintain a culture of trust, transparency, and psychological safety to enable open dialogue that encourages diverse perspectives.
• Challenge assumptions and the status quo with curiosity and courage to drive continuous improvement and enhance team performance.
• Balance strategic vision with hands‑on technical guidance, ensuring alignment between business goals and technical execution.
• Set an example through integrity, resilience, and a commitment to mentoring colleagues to reach their full potential.

Qualifications

Mandatory

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or a related field.
• At least five years of software development experience in a production environment, including at least two to three years in a technical leadership role.
• Proven ability to lead and mentor engineering teams across technology layers, make architectural decisions within approved enterprise constraints, and enforce engineering and code quality standards; demonstrated experience with Agile methods, product backlog management, cross‑functional collaboration, technical prioritization, and accountability for sprint commitments and delivery results.
• Deep, hands‑on technical expertise in modern programming languages and development frameworks (e.g., React, React Native, Angular, Node.js, Java, NestJS), RESTful APIs, OpenAPI/Swagger, and integration patterns.
• Strong experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), cloud-native architecture patterns, containers and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes), infrastructure automation, CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and modern DevOps and DevSecOps practices.
• Experience with relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL) or NoSQL databases (e.g., MongoDB, Cassandra), or both, along with a solid understanding of data access frameworks, industry standards, and best practices in database integration and performance optimization.
• Excellent communication skills and ability to align technical decisions across teams, collaborate with technical and non‑technical stakeholders, and explain technical concepts to a non‑specialist audience.
• Demonstrated punctuality and reliability to drive overall team success in a fast‑paced environment.

Assets

• Experience with MuleSoft or other Java‑based enterprise service buses (e.g., IBM IIB, Tibco).
• Experience with API management platforms such as Apigee, IBM API Connect, or MuleSoft, and enterprise systems.
• Knowledge of generative AI, machine learning model integration, AI‑assisted development tools, prompt design, or AI evaluation frameworks.
• Experience gained in large‑scale, regulated, or mission‑critical environments; experience in the airline or travel industry and understanding of the challenges and systems specific to this sector.
• Certifications in cloud architecture, Agile leadership, or security frameworks (e.g., AWS Solutions Architect, Scrum Master, CISSP).

Employment Conditions:

Candidates must be eligible to work in the country concerned at the time a job offer is presented and are responsible for obtaining necessary work permits, visas, or other authorizations. Proof of eligibility must be provided before the start date.

Language Requirements

All things being equal, preference will be given to bilingual candidates.

Diversity and Inclusion

Air Canada is firmly committed to diversity and inclusion and aims to create a healthy, accessible, and rewarding workplace that highlights the unique contribution of our employees to our company’s success.

As an equal opportunity employer, we encourage diverse applications so that we can build a workforce that is varied and representative of our customers and the communities where we live and serve.