Senior Back End Developer

CoLab Software; Canada; Remote; CAD 100,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

A growing tech company in Canada is seeking a Senior Back End Developer to advocate for technology and mentor the team. This role demands expertise in Python, relational databases, and scalable API design, along with a passion for teamwork and continuous improvement. With hybrid work flexibility, the ideal candidate will contribute to impactful projects and drive best practices within the development team.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional, hands-on development experience.
• Experience working on SaaS and large-scale distributed systems.
• Mentoring and advising junior developers.

Responsibilities

• Understand complex customer problems and build solutions.
• Collaborate on design and planning of work scopes.
• Develop, test, and ship user-facing features.
• Develop and maintain robust and scalable APIs.
• Participate in code reviews for quality delivery.

Skills

Proficient in Python and its libraries

Hands-on experience with relational databases

Experience writing robust automated tests

Git workflow experience

Experience with Monitoring/Observability tools

Experience integrating large language models via APIs

Tools

PostgreSQL

MySQL

DynamoDB

OpenSearch

Cypress

Playwright

Git

DataDog

Job description

At CoLab, we help mechanical engineering teams bring life-changing products to market years sooner.

CoLab is a cloud based platform purpose built for fast, effective design review. Using CoLab, multiple engineers, designers, and other stakeholders can review designs together and build off one another's feedback. Engineers at companies like Ford, Komatsu, and Johnson Controls use CoLab to review designs faster, prevent mistakes, and build the next generation of innovative products.

About the Role

As a Senior Back End Developer (Software Developer IV) on our Build Scale Team, you are a technology advocate and a mentor within your team. You have an in-depth knowledge of the CoLab technology stack and how different components and services interact across the platform. You push for best practices and technical standards, and help guide the team technology direction towards simple, maintainable solutions.

Our Ideal Candidate

Experience working on SaaS, large-scale distributed systems and a consistent track record of building and maintaining highly scalable products would be considered an asset.

Success will be measured by:

• On time delivery of new product features and changes
• Promotes clean and maintainable code and software development best practices
• Clear communication and technical leadership within team
• Self directed, takes ownership of tasks, stays apprised of broader team’s work
• Mentoring and advising others on the team

Job Responsibilities

• Understand complex customer problems and requirements and work in a team to build a solution that adds value for the customer and the product as a whole
• Collaborate with other team members to design and plan complex scopes of work from product requirements and UI/UX designs
• Develop, test, and ship critical user-facing features on a regular basis
• Develop, test, and maintain robust and scalable APIs.
• Participate in code reviews and help your team deliver high-quality software
• Advocate for all aspects of the user’s experience, with a focus on clarity and speed
• Contribute to tech technology direction and best practices
• Mentor, support, and be an information source to junior developers

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional, hands-on development experience
• Proficient in Python and its libraries, with hands-on experience in designing, developing, and maintaining robust and scalable APIs.
• Hands-on experience with relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL), NoSQL databases (e.g.: DynamoDB), vector databases (e.g., OpenSearch) and querying frameworks/APIs (e.g.: SQLAlchemy).
• Experience writing robust automated tests, including unit, as well as end-to-end (E2E) tests using Cypress or Playwright.
• Experience with Git workflow (pull requests, code reviews)
• Experience working with Monitoring / Observability tool (e.g, DataDog, Retool)
• AI/ML Experience:
• Agent workflows: pydantic-ai
• Experience integrating and prompting large language models (LLMs) via APIs (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini)
• Experience working with ML services in the cloud infrastructure, e.g. Sagemaker, Bedrock, etc.
• Passion for working in teams with emphasis on respect and continuous improvement
• Willingness to raise your hand when you see something could be done / built better

Nice-to-have

• Experience with React and front-end tools such as Webpack, Vite, npm and ESLint would be considered an asset
• GraphQL
• Remote/Hybrid Work: Our main office location is in St. John’s, NL where we offer hybrid and remote opportunities. This role has the flexibility to work from anywhere within Canada.

CoLab cares deeply about diversity, equity, and inclusion. We encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet every single qualification—your potential is what matters most to us.

We are an equal opportunity employer. Diversity, equity, and inclusion are core to our culture and success.