Founding AI Engineering Manager, Toronto (Remote)

CommerceIQ; Toronto; Remote; CAD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading AI commerce intelligence firm is seeking an Engineering Manager for their Toronto office. In this player/coach role, you will establish and lead a new team of AI Engineers, collaborating closely with the cofounder to drive innovation and technical direction in a rapidly scaling environment. The ideal candidate has over 5 years of backend software development experience, strong leadership skills, and hands-on experience with AI models.

Benefits

Variable bonus

Long-term incentives (stock options)

Discretionary bonuses

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in backend software development, with ideally 2+ years in people leadership roles.
• Proven experience building and leading AI-focused engineering teams and delivering production-grade ML/AI systems.
• Hands-on experience with training and deploying AI models, including LLMs or domain-specific models.
• Deep understanding of agentic architectures and production AI agents.

Responsibilities

• Build and lead a founding AI engineering team in Toronto.
• Act as a player-coach, contributing hands-on to system architecture and AI model development.
• Design and implement scalable backend systems.
• Oversee the full lifecycle of AI development.
• Collaborate closely with product managers and data scientists.
• Ensure engineering excellence across design and quality.

Skills

Backend software development

People leadership

AI-focused engineering teams

AI model training

Problem-solving

Communication skills

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

Python

Java

Scala

Go

AWS

GCP

Azure

Job description

A leading AI commerce intelligence firm is seeking an Engineering Manager for their Toronto office. In this player/coach role, you will establish and lead a new team of AI Engineers, collaborating closely with the cofounder to drive innovation and technical direction in a rapidly scaling environment. The ideal candidate has over 5 years of backend software development experience, strong leadership skills, and hands-on experience with AI models.