Engineering Manager

Aterlo; Southwestern Ontario; On-site; CAD 150,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Aterlo is seeking an Engineering Manager in Canada to lead and grow software teams, ensuring delivery of reliable, high‑quality products. You will coach engineers, manage performance, and collaborate with founders on architecture and priorities.

You’ll balance hands‑on technical work with people leadership, establish clear processes, and drive data‑driven decisions to keep the team fast as it scales.

Qualifications

• 2 - 4 years of experience managing software development teams.
• Hands-on software development experience.
• Experience with SDLC methodologies for SaaS applications designing and building software products at scale.
• Commitment to nurturing a team and growing individuals.
• Strong leadership, communication, and conflict management to build consensus.
• Entrepreneurial spirit with a focus on delivering high quality.
• Strategic planning and data-driven decision analysis.
• Proven ability to coordinate projects in an agile environment.
• Ability to select tools and KPIs to measure engineering delivery and quality.

Responsibilities

• Coaching the team to be better, have more impact and reach career goals.
• Performance management: handle difficult conversations and manage underperformance.
• Belonging & Trust: create an environment where engineers feel safe to speak up.
• Clarity: ensure engineers understand what they build and why.
• Hiring & Onboarding: manage pipeline and structured onboarding.
• Missionaries: maintain onboarding plans to prevent stagnation.
• Engineering delivery: maximize customer value, quality, security, and reliability with observable systems.
• Team hygiene: run standups, retrospectives, and planning sessions to unblock work.
• Manage engineering tools and budgets.
• Reality checks: provide realistic timelines based on data.
• Unblocking: remove obstacles quickly.

Skills

Team management

Hands-on development

SDLC methodologies

People development

Leadership & communication

Entrepreneurial mindset

Strategic planning

Agile coordination

KPIs & metrics

Job description

About the Role

At Aterlo, our founders lead product and architecture. They set the context: what we’re building, why, and the technical vision. As Engineering Manager, you build the capability to deliver it: the right people, practices, and processes to ship reliably as we grow.

You’ll coach and develop engineers, set clear expectations, build trust and accountability, and clear the obstacles that slow the team down. You’ll improve quality through practical changes to testing, deployment, code review, and knowledge sharing. You’ll stay hands‑on technically, bring sound judgment to delivery estimates, and add just enough structure to keep the team fast as it scales.

Key Responsibilities

People & Performance

• Coaching: You coach the team on how to be better, have more impact and help them reach their career goals.
• Performance Management: You handle the difficult conversations. If someone isn't performing, you identify it early and either coach them up or manage them out before it hurts the culture.
• Belonging & Trust: You create an environment where engineers feel safe to admit mistakes, speak up when things aren’t clear or push back on unrealistic deadlines.
• Clarity: Ensuring engineers have clarity on what they're building and why (even when that clarity comes from translating founder context, not formal specs or discovery)
• Hiring & Onboarding: You manage the pipeline. You ensure new hires are
• "Missionaries" (passionate about the goal) and have a structured onboarding plan so they don't flounder.

Delivery

• Engineering: Consistently deliver a product that maximizes customer value, product quality, security, and reliability, including building and maintaining highly‑observable systems with excellent metrics and actionable alerts.
• Team Hygiene: You ensure the teams run standups, retrospectives, and planning sessions as appropriate. You ensure these aren't just empty rituals but actually unblock work.
• Manage Engineering Tools: You ensure the team has the tools to operate successfully and within that manage the tool budget.
• Reality Checks: You protect the team from founder optimism. When founders ask for a feature in 2 days that takes 2 weeks, you are the one who communicates the realistic timeline based on data, not emotion.
• Unblocking: You aggressively remove obstacles whether it’s access to tools, missing designs, or waiting on approval.

Quality & Technical Health

• QA & CI/CD Standards: You implement the testing protocols and deployment pipelines that prevent "it works on my machine" issues.
• Code Quality Standards: Ensure that the codebase has high code quality standards appropriate for each area.
• On-Call & Incident Management: You structure the rotation so that no single engineer (and not the founders) is burned out by 3 AM alerts.
• Manage the ‘Bus Factor’: You ensure that knowledge is codified and prioritize knowledge transfer from founders and other single points of failure.
• Technical Debt Management: You measure and advocate for paying down technical debt in service of execution speed and quality. You take responsibility for the allocation and effectiveness of the “20% time”.
• Architecture: Provide input towards technical direction and architecture decisions

Skills/Qualifications

• 2 - 4 years of experience managing software development teams
• Previous hands‑on software development experience
• Experience with SDLC methodologies for SaaS applications designing and building software products at scale
• A commitment to nurturing a team and growing individuals
• Strong leadership, consultation communication, and conflict management skills to build consensus with project leaders and stakeholders.
• Entrepreneurial spirit, priding yourself on getting valuable things done with a high level of quality
• Strategic planning and decision analysis capabilities, emphasizing quantitative or data‑driven approaches.
• Proven ability to coordinate projects in an agile environment, aligning people, priorities, and dependencies to support successful delivery.
• Sound judgment in selecting tools and KPIs to measure engineering delivery, software quality, and team effectiveness.

Bonus Points

• Experience with networking and Internet Service Providers
• Experience with network or service monitoring products
• Experience operating production services

The anticipated salary range for this role is $150,000–$180,000. The final compensation offer will be determined based on the candidate's experience, skills, qualifications, and fit for the role, and may fall anywhere within the posted range.