Lead Software Engineer Toronto, Canada

Momentum Financial Services Group; Toronto; Hybrid; CAD 125,000 - 135,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Discretionary bonus

Health and dental plans fully covered

Employee Assistance Program

Retirement plans

Hybrid work model

Tuition assistance

Perkopolis discounts

Rewards & recognition

Job summary

Momentum Financial Services Group in Canada is seeking a Lead Software Engineer, Backend & Cloud Platform to own and operate Integration Hub, an AWS-based integration platform connecting internal and external systems.

You will lead an engineering team, drive backend services in Node.js/NestJS on AWS ECS, and shape deployment, monitoring, and incident response. Hybrid work model is offered.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or equivalent amount of experience.
• 10+ years of software engineering experience with strong backend development.
• Experience operating production systems in AWS (ECS, Lambda, S3, RDS/Postgres, CloudWatch).
• Proficiency with CI/CD pipelines, containerization, observability, and incident response.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform strongly preferred).
• Proficiency with relational databases (Postgres) and data integrity.

Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor a small engineering team, prioritizing workloads and providing performance feedback.
• Own and evolve backend API services built with Node.js/NestJS on AWS ECS.
• Design event-driven patterns using Kafka (AWS MSK) and Redis caching.
• Support and enhance file ingestion pipelines using S3, Lambda, schedulers, and Python/Node.js components.
• Improve CI/CD pipelines and engineering quality with GitHub Actions and testing tooling.
• Manage infrastructure changes via Terraform, including networking and observability.

Skills

Node.js

NestJS

Kafka / MSK

Python

Terraform

AWS

CI/CD

PostgreSQL

Education

Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related field

Tools

Docker

Terraform

PostgreSQL

Job description

At Momentum Financial Services Group, we help people move forward by reimagining how money works for those who need it most. With more than 40 years of experience, we’re the team behind Money Mart—Canada’s largest non-bank branch network—and a leader in financial solutions for underserved communities.

From short-term loans to money transfers and prepaid cards, we power the products, technology, and operations that connect over a million customers a year to the money they need, when they need it.

At MFSG, we come together across teams and departments to create something bigger than ourselves: solutions that remove barriers and give people access to money they might not get anywhere else. Whether you're solving problems, building systems, or shaping strategy, your work fuels real support for real people.

Compensation Philosophy:Our strategy is designed to attract and retain top talent by offering competitive, fair, and performance-driven rewards. We benchmark against the market, recognize strong performance and continuously evolve to meet the needs of our people and our business.

Discretionary Annual Bonus:Enjoy the opportunity for a discretionary bonus based on individual performance and company success.

Comprehensive Benefits:Our benefits include health and dental plans with 100% of the premiums covered. We also offer an Employee Assistance Program to support your mental well-being and provide resources for personal challenges.

Retirement Plans:Plan for your future with our robust retirement savings options, ensuring you’re set for the long haul.

Hybrid Work Environment:Experience the best of both worlds with our hybrid work model, allowing you to balance remote work with in-office.

Perks and Rewards:Enjoy reimbursement for tuition assistance and professional development, discounts through Perkopolis and participate in our rewards and recognition programs to celebrate your contributions.

What You’ll Do

The Job:Lead Software Engineer, Backend & Cloud Platform

We’re hiring a Lead Software Engineer, Backend & Cloud Platform, to help own and operate Integration Hub, an AWS-based integration platform supporting Integration with Internal & External systems. You’ll work across backend services (APIs, event-driven processing), data synchronization and file ingestion pipelines, and production operations. A key part of this role is supporting the transition of production support from our current vendor to an internal team, including knowledge transfer, runbooks, and establishing sustainable operational practices.

Must have led and developed an engineering team, providing day-to-day direction, prioritizing workloads, conducting technical reviews, coaching team members, and supporting performance management and career growth

What You’ll Do

• Team leadership experience — has led a small engineering team, assigned/prioritized work, coached developers, reviewed technical work, provided performance feedback and helped develop team members.
• Own and evolve backend API services built with Node.js / NestJS running on AWS ECS.
• Design and implement event-driven patterns using Kafka (AWS MSK) and caching with Redis.
• Support and enhance file ingestion pipelines using S3, Lambda, schedulers, and Python/Node.js components.
• Maintain and improve data sync workloads (e.g., AWS Batch/Lambda, scheduled jobs), ensuring correctness and recoverability.
• Lead/participate in on-call and incident response, including post-incident RCAs and preventive improvements.
• Improve CI/CD and engineering quality: GitHub Actions, Jest, performance testing (e.g., k6), static analysis/security scanning (e.g., SonarQube, Veracode).
• Manage infrastructure changes via Terraform, including networking (e.g., NLB), observability, and runtime configuration.
• Collaborate with Business stakeholders and partner teams on requirements, SLAs, and release planning.
• Partner with the vendor team to drive structured knowledge transfer (architecture deep dives, incident walkthroughs, deployment procedures).
• Build and maintain runbooks, support playbooks, and troubleshooting guides for APIs, ingestion, and sync processes.
• Establish internal operational practices: alert tuning, dashboards, on-call processes, escalation paths, and post-incident RCA discipline.
• Identify and reduce vendor dependencies (scripts, access, undocumented procedures), ensuring the internal team can operate independently.
• Support a parallel-run period where internal engineers progressively take ownership of L1/L2/L3 support with vendor as fallback.

What You’ll Bring

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science or equivalent amount of experience.
• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with strong backend development expertise.
• Solid experience operating production systems in AWS (ECS, Lambda, S3, RDS/Postgres, CloudWatch).
• Comfortable with DevOps practices: CI/CD pipelines, containerization, observability, incident response.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform strongly preferred).
• Proficiency with relational databases (Postgres) including performance troubleshooting and data integrity.
• Strong communication skills and ownership mindset; able to lead technical decisions and mentor others.

Preferred Qualifications

• NestJS preferred.
• Experience with event streaming/messaging (Kafka/MSK preferred).
• Python experience (for ingestion tooling or serverless components)
• Experience with regulated/financial data flows, reconciliation, or integration platforms
• Experience hardening systems for reliability (idempotency, retries, DLQs, backpressure)

Committed to Equal Opportunity:

• MFSG is committed to accommodating applicants up to the point of undue hardship during the recruitment, assessment and selection process. If you are selected for an interview, please notify MFSG if you require accommodation in respect of the materials or procedures used at any time during this process. If you require accommodation, MFSG will work with you to determine how to meet your needs.

Please note: The salary range for this position is between C$ 125,000 to C$ 135,000.

About MFSG – Our Commitment to Responsible Innovation

At MFSG, we are committed to building innovative solutions grounded in ethical, transparent, and responsible use of data and technology. Aligned with the principles outlined in Canada’s Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA), we take a proactive approach to ensuring that any AI or data-driven systems we use are safe, fair, and accountable.

This posting is for a current positionwithin our organization, offering the opportunity to contribute to meaningful, responsible innovation that supports our employees, clients, and communities.

We prioritize strong data governance, clear communication around how systems work, and safeguards that reduce risks and protect individuals. Our focus is on developing tools and processes that promote equity, reliability, and trust, supported by ongoing monitoring and continuous improvement.

Joining MFSG means contributing to a future-focused organization that values both innovation and integrity, where your work helps shape solutions that responsibly support our employees, clients, and communities.