Manager – Engineering

Tucows; Canada; Remote; CAD 160,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Tucows Domains, the world’s largest wholesale domain registrar, is seeking a Manager, Engineering to lead a skilled engineering team delivering APIs, services, and platforms that power domain infrastructure.

The role combines technical leadership with people management, guiding architecture, day‑to‑day delivery, and collaboration with Product, Operations, QA, and Design to build reliable, scalable systems. Remote-first, Canada-based applicants encouraged.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in CS or related field.
• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience with backend focus.
• 2+ years of engineering management experience with people management.
• Strong experience with Python, Go, or similar backend languages.
• Experience designing RESTful APIs using frameworks such as FastAPI or Gin.
• Experience with relational databases, preferably PostgreSQL, including schema design.
• Experience designing, building, and operating highly available, reliable, and scalable services.
• Strong technical judgment and hands-on development experience.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills.
• Experience with Agile methodologies.
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of engineers through recruiting, 1-on-1s, feedback, and performance management.
• Own day-to-day engineering execution, including planning, prioritization, delivery, release coordination, and blockers.
• Provide hands-on technical leadership through architecture discussions, code reviews, and production contributions.
• Lead design and architecture decisions for the team’s services, aligning with platform strategy.
• Translate business requirements into actionable technical plans while balancing roadmap, debt, and priorities.
• Oversee design and maintenance of services, APIs, databases, and integrations.
• Lead complex initiatives across multiple applications and cross‑team dependencies.
• Drive reliability, performance, security, observability, and maintainability improvements.
• Lead incident response and root cause analysis.
• Establish engineering practices including automated testing, CI/CD, documentation, and code quality.
• Leverage AI-assisted tools to improve productivity and code quality across the team.

Skills

Backend development

Python

Go

RESTful APIs

Distributed systems

Relational databases

Communication

Agile

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science/Software Engineering/Computer Engineering

Tools

Git

CI/CD

Docker

Kubernetes

AWS

OpenAPI

Job description

Tucows Domains is the world’s largest wholesale domain registrar, responsible for maintaining the health, neutrality, and openness of an important—but largely invisible part of the Internet: the domain name system (DNS).

As part of Tucows—one of the world’s largest Internet companies—Tucows Domains has a rich history of helping make the Internet better, operating globally under the Ascio, Enom, Hover and OpenSRS brands.

We embrace a people-first philosophy that is rooted in respect, trust, and flexibility. We believe that whatever works for our employees is what works best for us. It’s also why the majority of our roles are remote-first, meaning you can work from anywhere you can connect to the Internet! Today, over one thousand people from over 20 countries are part of our team.

If this sounds exciting to you, join the herd!

Description

The Manager, Engineering leads a highly skilled team of engineering professionals responsible for designing, building, and maintaining the services, applications, databases, and APIs behind Tucows Domains platforms.

This is a hands‑on engineering management role combining technical leadership, people management, and engineering execution. You will guide architecture and technical decisions, own day‑to‑day delivery, support production systems, and develop engineers into strong, independent contributors.

You will work closely with Product, Operations, QA, Design, and other engineering teams to deliver reliable, scalable, secure, and maintainable systems. You will also partner with engineering leadership on broader platform architecture, technical strategy, and long‑term improvements.

We value leaders who remain technically engaged, take ownership of engineering outcomes, and embrace modern development practices, including AI-assisted engineering tools.

This is a remote position for applicants based in Canada.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of engineers through recruiting, hiring, regular one‑on‑one, feedback, career development, and performance management.
• Own day‑to‑day engineering execution, including planning, prioritization, technical delivery, release coordination, and resolving blockers.
• Provide hands‑on technical leadership through architecture discussions, code reviews, troubleshooting, and contributions to production code.
• Lead technical design and architecture decisions for the team's services, partnering with engineering leadership on broader platform strategy and cross‑system initiatives.
• Translate business and product requirements into actionable technical plans, balancing roadmap delivery, technical debt, and operational priorities.
• Oversee the design and maintenance of services, applications, APIs, database schemas, and integrations.
• Lead complex initiatives across multiple applications and services, coordinating dependencies with Product, Operations, QA, Design, and other teams.
• Drive improvements in system reliability, performance, security, observability, and maintainability.
• Lead technical incident response, root cause analysis, and continuous improvements to system reliability.
• Establish and improve engineering practices, including automated testing, CI/CD, documentation, code quality, and release processes.
• Leverage AI‑assisted development tools to improve engineering productivity, code quality, testing, and development workflows, while encouraging responsible adoption across the team.
• Establish clear engineering goals and use delivery, quality, and reliability indicators to drive continuous improvement.
• Develop technical ownership within the team, balancing hands‑on involvement with effective delegation and mentorship.
• Communicate engineering progress, technical decisions, risks, and operational concerns clearly to stakeholders.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field.
• 6+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong background in backend development, system design, and production applications.
• 2+ years of engineering management experience, including direct people management, mentoring, and performance management.
• Strong experience with Python, Go, or similar backend languages.
• Experience designing RESTful APIs using frameworks such as FastAPI or Gin.
• Experience with relational databases, preferably PostgreSQL, including schema design and query optimization.
• Experience designing, building, and operating highly available, reliable, and scalable services.
• Strong technical judgment and hands‑on software development experience, including contributions to production code and technical problem‑solving.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to explain technical decisions, trade‑offs, and risks to technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Experience managing engineering delivery, technical priorities, and cross‑team dependencies.
• Experience with Agile software development methodologies, including Scrum, Kanban, or similar approaches.
• Demonstrated experience using AI‑assisted software development tools, including appropriate validation and security practices.
• Experience with automated testing, Continuous Integration, Git, and modern development workflows.
• Experience supporting production systems, troubleshooting complex issues, and leading incident response.
• Experience leading and collaborating with geographically distributed engineering teams.

Nice to Have

• Experience with event‑driven architectures and messaging systems such as Kafka, RabbitMQ, or other message brokers.
• Knowledge of DNS, EPP, RDAP, or other Internet protocols.
• Experience modernizing legacy applications and services.
• Experience developing and maintaining e‑commerce or other transaction‑oriented platforms.
• Experience with AWS or other cloud platforms, and container technologies such as Docker, Docker Swarm, or Kubernetes.
• Knowledge of OAuth 2.0, JWT, OpenAPI, and API security practices.
• Familiarity with networking, Linux, and infrastructure operations.

The base salary range for this position is $160,000 to $170,000. Range shown in $CAD for Canadian residents. Other countries will differ. Range may vary on a number of factors including, but not limited to: location, experience and qualifications. Tucows believes in a total rewards offering that includes fair compensation and generous benefits.

Want to know more about what we stand for? At Tucows we care about protecting the open Internet, narrowing digital divide, and supporting fairness and equality.

We also know that diversity drives innovation. We are committed to inclusion across race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status or disability status. We celebrate multiple approaches and diverse points of view.

We will ensure that individuals with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, to perform crucial job functions, and to receive other benefits and privileges of employment. Please contact us to request an accommodation.

We use AI‑enabled tools throughout our recruitment process to help us work more efficiently and consistently. These tools support our hiring teams by organizing and reviewing information, while final hiring decisions are always made by people.

Tucows and its subsidiaries participate in the E‑verify program for all US employees.

Learn more about Tucows, our businesses, culture and employee benefits on our site here.