Senior Software Engineer

Polarized Capital; Montreal (administrative region); On-site; CAD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Polarized Capital in Montreal is seeking a Senior Software Engineer to help build leverage across the firm and work directly with founders and technical teams. You will explore and ship production-grade software, prototype AI-powered workflows, and move between product engineering, applied AI, and research engineering as needed.

You’ll spend time solving problems for portfolio companies, researching new technologies, and delivering concrete systems while maintaining high standards and integrity.

Qualifications

• Experience shipping production software across multiple languages.

Responsibilities

• Turn loosely defined ideas into working systems with founders and tech leads.

Skills

Production software

Systems thinking

Debugging skills

AI tools

Cloud infrastructure

Ambiguity to concrete plans

Communication & integrity

Tools

LLMs

Embeddings

Retrieval systems

OCR

Computer vision

Job description

Tim & Dan here. Between the two of us, we’ve interviewed thousands of people and hired close to one hundred. We think normal job descriptions are dry and rarely convey what it’s actually like to work with the people hiring you.

In this role, you’ll report to Dan while working closely with Tim, our founders, and engineering teams across the portfolio. A little about us before you start reading. We still act like two dysfunctional brothers who are trying to size each other up but have an enormous amount of respect for one another. We love building together and are excited to be growing our team.

At a glance

Title: Senior Software Engineer

Reports to: Dan, Managing Director of Polarized Capital

Location: Montreal; Remote

Compensation: $150K-$200K CAD, depending on experience

About Polarized Capital

Polarized Capital started as a way for Tim to invest in, build, and learn alongside founders tackling problems that mattered most to him.

Today, we focus on:

• The human experience
• Science and biology
• AI and technology

We challenge the status quo and push ourselves to grow. Our newest venture is a nonprofit foundational lab conducting research at the intersection of human-to-human connection, therapeutics, and AI. Think OpenAI if its mission weren’t to democratize AI, but to democratize and scale human relationships.

About the role

This is Polarized Capital’s first dedicated engineering hire. We’re building an engineering function that creates leverage across the firm rather than belonging to one company. You’ll work directly with founders and technical teams while also conducting longer-horizon R&D.

Your work will span two areas:

• Helping portfolio companies solve important product and engineering problems
• Exploring and building new technologies, products, and research initiatives across the firm

The balance will change over time. You might spend several weeks embedded with one company, then shift into a research initiative or prototype something that doesn’t yet belong inside an existing business.

What you’ll do

• Work directly with founders and technical leaders to turn loosely defined ideas into working systems.
• Design, build, and ship production-quality software across portfolio companies and Polarized Capital research initiatives.
• Prototype and deploy AI-powered products and workflows using technologies such as LLMs, embeddings, retrieval systems, computer vision, OCR, and agents.
• Research emerging technologies, evaluate their practical value, and turn promising ideas into experiments, prototypes, and production systems.
• Enter unfamiliar codebases and systems, understand them quickly, and help teams make meaningful progress.
• Build internal tools, automation, and platforms that make engineers and operators more effective.
• Review system designs and help teams make sound architectural and technical decisions.
• Move between product engineering, applied AI, infrastructure, and research engineering as the problem requires.
• Go deep when necessary into unfamiliar industries or technical domains, including science, healthcare, finance, manufacturing, or other complex environments.

What you bring

Must haves

• Experience shipping production software across several programming languages.
• Strong systems thinking across software, infrastructure, data, and product.
• Strong debugging skills and the ability to understand unfamiliar systems quickly.
• Experience with AI tools such as LLMs, embeddings, retrieval, OCR, computer vision, or agents.
• Familiarity with cloud infrastructure and modern deployment practices.
• Ability to turn ambiguous problems into concrete plans and working software.
• Excellent communication, independence, judgment, discretion, and integrity.

Nice to haves

• Experience across multiple products, companies, or engineering teams.
• Experience in healthcare, finance, science, manufacturing, or another complex or regulated industry.
• Experience mentoring engineers or raising technical quality through leadership and example.

Day-to-day

No two weeks will look the same. Some weeks you’ll spend most of your time deeply focused on one company or problem. Others may involve moving between a research project, a product prototype, an architecture discussion, and an unfamiliar codebase that needs help.

The constant is that you’ll be building, researching, collaborating, and making decisions about where engineering can create the most leverage.

Success in this role isn’t measured by how many tickets you close or how much infrastructure you own. It’s measured by the quality of the problems you help solve, the systems you build, the judgment you bring to difficult decisions, and whether the engineers around you become more capable because you’re there.

What to expect from your peers

You’ll work with ambitious, pragmatic founders, product leaders, designers, and engineers who care about exceptional work without losing sight of one another’s happiness. Many of us are parents, and we value flexibility, direct communication, and high standards.

You’ll like this role if…

• You’re energized, not intimidated, by opening an unfamiliar repository, entering a new domain, or teaching yourself something difficult.
• You’ve demonstrated to yourself that you can grow by going beyond your perceived limits, whether academically, professionally, athletically, creatively, or personally.
• You think of technology, and AI in particular, as a form of leverage.
• You enjoy research but are equally motivated to turn what you learn into something real.
• You care more about solving the problem than whether it falls neatly inside your job description.
• You care deeply about excellence without becoming precious or bureaucratic.
• You have a point of view, but you’re willing to change it when new evidence tells you that you’re wrong.
• You create clarity through research, experimentation, questions, and action.
• You enjoy helping other engineers become better at what they do.

Location

This role is currently remote but requires you to be based in the Montreal area. We plan to open a Montreal office in the future, at which point the role will likely transition to a hybrid schedule. You should also expect occasional travel to support our portfolio companies as needed.

The process

We expect candidates to evaluate us as carefully as we evaluate them.

• Initial conversation with Dan (30 minutes) — ownership, judgment, communication, learning velocity, technical instinct, and grit.
• Conversations with Tim and technical team (30 minutes each) — working chemistry, communication, technical depth, and problem-solving.
• Take-home assignment (3–5 hours) — a realistic engineering problem evaluating systems thinking, technical judgment, prioritization, communication, experimentation, and effective use of AI.
• Final working session (60 minutes) — present your solution and collaborate with the team. We’ll discuss your reasoning, adaptability, communication, and what you’re currently curious about learning or building.

My expectations for you:

I have extremely high standards, but the real standard isn’t perfection. It’s growth. I’ve been wrong more times than I’ve been right. Mistakes are opportunities to learn. I don’t expect you to get everything right the first time; I do expect you to confront mistakes and grow from them. If you don’t know something, ask AI, ask the team, ask me. Over time, develop the judgment to sniff out bullshit when either AI or humans produce it.

Tell me and the people we work with when we’re wrong. You’ll have my support to address the issues you see, even when I am the issue. You’ll have visibility into sensitive data and decisions across the portfolio. Manage that access with the highest level of integrity and care.

What you should expect from me

Expect me to invest in your growth, the team’s growth, and my own. People invested in me, and I try to pay that forward. I often speak first and think second. That’s how I form ideas and stress-test my thinking. I may sound confident while still forming a view; if facts show I’m wrong, expect me to change my mind. Above all, expect me to lead with integrity.

My expectations for you:

I have high standards, but they’re rooted in preparation, ownership, and effort more than perfection.

Have a point of view. Come prepared. I don’t need the perfect answer, but I want to see that you’ve thought critically and tried to solve it. Bring solutions alongside problems and push back when you disagree. Some of the best decisions I’ve been part of came from people telling me I was wrong. I care more about getting to the right answer than protecting hierarchy or ego. When mistakes happen, own them, learn from them, fix them, and move forward. Above all, care about the quality of your work, the people around you, and constantly improving yourself and the systems around you.

What you should expect from me

Expect me to be highly organized and to value preparation, clarity, and documentation. I have a strong bias toward action. I prefer momentum, iteration, and learning through execution over endless discussion. I’ll invest in your growth, give direct feedback, and create opportunities for you to do exceptional work. I care about outcomes and accountability, but I don’t want to dictate how every piece of work gets done. I think great engineers do their best work when they’re trusted.

What we’d like to leave you with

An investor we’ve partnered with says the entire GDP of the internet is up for grabs now that AI is at the heart of every digital product. We agree. It’s an extraordinary time to build and pursue ideas that once felt impossible. More than anything, we think this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reinvent ourselves and reach for world-changing ideas.

If you join us, you’re joining a team that wants to change the world through our work, build exceptional relationships together, keep pushing ourselves to grow, and have fun leaving a dent in the universe.