Software Development Manager, Generative AI

Autodesk; Toronto; On-site; CAD 140,000 - 205,700; Full time

Job summary

A leading software company is seeking a Software Development Manager in Toronto. This role involves leading a full-stack engineering team responsible for integrating AI capabilities into product experiences. Responsibilities include providing technical guidance, managing project scopes, and ensuring high-quality delivery. Minimum qualifications include 7+ years in software engineering with a strong emphasis on front-end work and experience leading customer-focused projects. The ideal candidate should excel in team leadership and possess strong communication skills.

Qualifications

• 7+ years of professional software engineering experience.
• Hands-on full-stack experience with an emphasis on front-end.
• Experience designing development tools or libraries.

Responsibilities

• Provide hands-on technical guidance to the team.
• Lead customer-facing UI and client integrations.
• Deliver predictable results by managing scope and dependencies.

Skills

Software engineering experience

Full-stack engineering

Front-end frameworks

Team leadership

Cloud-native development

Communication skills

Job description

Position Overview

Autodesk is building cloud-scale software, data platforms, and AI-enabled capabilities that help customers design, build, and operate the world around them. As the Software Development Manager, you will be the frontline manager for a full-stack engineering team responsible for integrating our AI capabilities and agentic workflows into product experiences. Your team will define shared data representations, deliver developer‑facing integration surfaces, and design the client and server components that let products and partners safely invoke and orchestrate automated assistants and flows. You will translate product priorities into engineering plans, coach and grow engineers, and ensure predictable delivery of production‑quality solutions.

Join us in transforming the AEC industry and shaping the future of design and construction. Make an impact and help build a new team from the ground up.

Report: You will report to a Senior Software Development Manager in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) Solutions Team.

Location: We support hybrid work, and you work near our Toronto, Canada offices or East Coast United States.

Team Scope

• Integrating AI‑enabled capabilities and agentic workflows into frontend and backend product flows
• Defining and implementing shared, granular data representations that enable consistent use across features
• Delivering integration surfaces and developer‑facing tooling that make capabilities accessible to product teams and partners
• Operating with an API‑first mindset and contributing to platform initiatives (including model‑control platform efforts) that provide consistent invocation, governance, and operational patterns for capability use across the company
• Delivering both client‑side and server‑side functionality and owning the end‑to‑end experience for the features your team ships
• Leading client‑side and front‑end engineering work — web UI, client integrations, and performance/visualization work that runs in browsers or desktop clients

Responsibilities

• Technical & day‑to‑day leadership. Provide hands‑on technical guidance and help the team make pragmatic architecture and implementation decisions that balance delivery speed and long‑term maintainability
• Front‑end & client ownership. Lead and coach engineers who implement customer‑facing UI and client integrations. Own client architecture and performance tradeoffs, collaborate with UX/design, and ensure frontend quality (responsiveness, accessibility, cross‑platform compatibility, and performance)
• People leadership & coaching. Run regular 1:1s, performance conversations, and career development for individual contributors. Foster a culture of ownership, quality, and psychological safety
• Deliver predictable results. Turn product priorities into clear milestones, manage scope and dependencies, and ensure the team delivers on schedule with high quality
• Integration & product focus. Work closely with product and research partners to translate evolving capabilities into safe, usable, and performant product experiences. Make sensible tradeoffs for UX, latency, and cost
• API‑first & platform orientation. Champion an API‑first approach for integration surfaces and contribute to platform initiatives (including MCP efforts) that provide consistent invocation, governance, and operational patterns for capability use across the company. (High‑level only; implementation details are intentionally broad.)
• Shared data & interoperability. Lead the team to design maintainable shared data representations and transformations so other teams can reliably consume and extend what your team builds
• Developer‑facing surfaces & tooling. Own the delivery of stable, well‑documented integration surfaces and developer tooling that enable internal and partner use — emphasizing reliability, versioning, and a strong developer experience
• Operational excellence & safety. Ensure services are observable and reliable. Partner with security/privacy and platform teams to embed governance, access controls, and safety practices into feature flows
• Developer productivity & automation. Promote CI/CD, automated quality checks, contract testing, and developer tooling to increase throughput while maintaining safety and quality
• Cross‑functional partnership. Work closely with Product, ML/Research, UX, Security/Privacy, and Platform teams to scope work, define acceptable behavior and failure modes for flows, and deliver integrated solutions
• Talent & hiring. Recruit and onboard engineers, strengthen front‑end and full‑stack capabilities, and participate in interview calibration and hiring

Minimum Qualifications

• 7+ years professional software engineering experience delivering production software with a record of coaching and growing individual contributors
• Hands‑on full‑stack experience with an emphasis on front‑end and client work (modern front‑end frameworks and tooling)
• Demonstrated experience leading teams that build customer‑facing UI and client integrations
• Experience designing and shipping integration surfaces and developer tools or libraries for internal teams or external partners
• Experience working with or alongside ML/AI or research teams to productionize capabilities, and familiarity with the unique operational and UX considerations that such work introduces
• Practical familiarity with cloud‑native development, CI/CD, and operational practices
• Strong written and verbal communication skills; proven ability to work cross‑functionally

Preferred Qualifications

• Direct experience designing or operating orchestration frameworks or model‑invocation patterns is a plus
• Strong front‑end engineering skills: JavaScript/TypeScript, React (or equivalent), component architecture, and frontend test automation
• Experience with performance‑critical client work, visualization/3D rendering (WebGL/OpenGL/three.js), or desktop/plugin integrations (C#/.NET or equivalent)
• Familiarity with browser developer tools, logging, and performance monitoring
• Experience with unit, integration, and contract testing frameworks for both client and server code
• Familiarity with security, privacy, and compliance considerations when designing integrations and developer surfaces
• Domain experience in AEC or adjacent design/engineering workflows is a plus

The Ideal Candidate

• You are a pragmatic, hands‑on engineering leader who can guide architecture and roll up your sleeves to help the team deliver
• You can recruit and identify top talent
• You have a passion for being a mentor and a teacher
• You understand how to translate ambiguous AI and research goals into practical, safe engineering plans
• You know how to motivate your team to achieve their goals
• You are curious and passionate about solving complex problems in new domains
• You easily communicate progress and build trust with a diverse set of partners

Salary transparency

Salary is one part of Autodesk’s competitive compensation package. For Canada based roles, we expect a starting base salary between $140,000 and $205,700. Offers are based on the candidate’s experience and geographic location, and may exceed this range. In addition to base salaries, our compensation package may include annual cash bonuses, commissions for sales roles, stock grants, and a comprehensive benefits package.