Senior Scala Engineer

Vish; Toronto; On-site; CAD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

RRSP benefits

Health and dental benefits

Job summary

Vish is seeking a Senior Scala Engineer in Toronto to be a core contributor to the backend powering Vish. You’ll take ambiguous requirements and translate them into well-designed, modular production-grade systems, set a high bar for engineering craft, and help shape the architecture as Vish scales.

This hands-on role requires leading by example in functional programming, mentoring other engineers, reviewing code, and driving architectural discussions.

Qualifications

• Several years of production code experience and strong FP background.
• The role requires hands-on work in functional programming and scalable systems.
• Experience with one or more FP languages (Scala strongly preferred).

Responsibilities

• Clarify vague requirements and design modular, production-grade backend components.
• Design interfaces and EDSLs, write clean, extensible code, and refactor for maintainability.
• Lead architectural discussions, review merges, and mentor engineers.

Skills

Production code

Functional programming

Scala

Haskell

OCaml

F#

Erlang

Elixir

Rust

Git

Linux CLI

Modular design

Build systems

Root-cause analysis

Learning new languages

TDD

Property-based testing

Tools

ZIO

Cats

Cats Effect

Doobie

ScalaCheck

Akka

Job description

Vish is a B2B SaaS company transforming the business of beauty, and we don't sound like a typical software company. Our platform and smart Bluetooth scale help salons eliminate colour waste, manage inventory, grow service revenue, and understand their colour business in a way they never could before. We're defining a category as we scale across five countries, and our ambition is to reshape supply chain management for the entire hair colour industry.

We're a distributed engineering team that cares deeply about building things well. We're opinionated about functional programming, and we're proud that the work we do helps small businesses thrive while cutting real environmental waste.

Location

In office 5 days a week - Toronto

The Impact You Will Have

As a Senior Scala Engineer, you'll be a core contributor to the backend that powers Vish. You'll take ambiguous, high-level requirements and turn them into well-designed, modular, production-grade systems. You'll set a high bar for engineering craft, through the code you write, the reviews you give, and the people you mentor, and help shape the architecture as Vish grows.

This is a hands‑on senior role for someone who leads by showing more than telling, and who genuinely enjoys functional programming done properly.

What You Will Do

Build and design

• Clarify vague or ill-posed requirements and turn them into a concrete implementation plan, decomposing scope into well-defined sub-components
• Design interfaces and EDSLs, and write clean, modular, extensible code
• Refactor existing code to make it more extensible and maintainable
• Work across our functional stack, including ZIO, Cats, Cats Effect, Doobie, ScalaCheck, and Akka

Raise the engineering bar

• Review merge requests and give thoughtful feedback, as review comments, written notes, or code patches, and approve them when they're ready
• Participate in and lead architectural and design discussions, proposing and critiquing implementation plans
• Conduct and take part in paired programming and review sessions

Mentor and communicate

• Coach and mentor other engineers in your areas of expertise
• Estimate complexity, provide realistic completion estimates, and proactively manage stakeholder expectations when things change

What You Will Bring

• Several years of experience writing production code
• Several years of functional programming experience, this is essential
• Hands‑on experience with one or more of Scala, Haskell, OCaml, F#, Erlang, Elixir, or Rust (Scala experience strongly preferred)
• Solid experience with databases (relational or NoSQL), Git, and the Linux command line
• Strength in modular, extensible design, and the judgement to infer missing acceptance criteria
• Experience with build systems and resolving dependency conflicts
• Strong root-cause analysis skills, and the discipline to avoid unproductive rabbit holes
• The ability to work effectively in a language or library you've never used before
• Empathy, humility, and personal accountability, someone who holds themselves and others to a high standard
• Experience with Test-Driven Development and Property-Based Testing is a strong asset

Why Vish

• Work on a real functional Scala codebase with a team that cares about doing it well
• Build software with genuine impact, helping small businesses succeed while reducing environmental waste
• Join a category-defining SaaS company at a global scale
• A collaborative engineering culture that values craft over ceremony
• Competitive compensation and benefits (to include RRSP and a comprehensive Health and Dental benefits)