Software Engineering Team Lead

Sage Recruiting Inc.; Canada; On-site; CAD 125,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

RRSP matching

Bonus

Paid vacation

Health insurance

Job summary

Sage Recruiting Inc. in Canada is seeking an Engineering Lead to guide a small AI-focused team while staying hands-on with core engineering tasks. You’ll balance coding, architecture, and system design with leadership duties as the team doubles in size.

You will own the backlog with the product owner, mentor engineers, drive agile ceremonies, ensure test automation, and communicate tradeoffs to leadership as the team scales toward a broader roadmap.

Qualifications

• Proven Team Lead experience: system design and architecture ownership, backlog management and reporting, engineering workflow optimization, presenting and defending timelines to leadership, performance conversations, coaching and mentoring engineers.
• Hands-on experience with agentic AI workflows in development, not just using an AI chat assistant.
• Strong architecture and systems design instincts.
• Experience working in an Agile environment.
• Solid foundation in C#/.NET (.NET 10), TypeScript, and REST API design.
• Real CI/CD ownership.
• Cloud deployment experience (AWS preferred, but not mandatory).
• Unit and integration testing as second nature.

Responsibilities

• Stay hands-on: ~60–70% of your time is coding, architecture, and system design, even as the team scales.
• Own the backlog with the team's product owner: grooming, estimation, and sprint planning.
• Hold regular 1:1s and check-ins, and flag delays or blockers before they become surprises.
• Partner with the team's tester on coverage and test automation, especially for AI-driven features.
• Track tech debt and flag dependencies approaching end of support, with a clear line open to product.
• Own high-level system architecture and end-to-end workflow design, and explain both clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Represent the team's technical decisions in bi-weekly leadership meetings
• Mentor and coach your team, including performance reviews.
• Build out team process and structure as headcount roughly doubles under you.

Skills

Team leadership

Agentic AI workflows

Architecture design

Agile methodologies

C#/.NET

REST API design

CI/CD ownership

Cloud deployment (AWS)

Unit and integration testing

Tools

GitHub Actions

Docker

AWS

Vite

MongoDB

Vue 3

Job description

Compensation: $125K to $150K + bonus + RRSP match

The Role

You'd be joining a small team of 4 that's about to double in size. Expect to stay genuinely hands-on: 60–70% of your time is coding, architecture, and system design, even as the team scales under you. The rest is running the team well, agile ceremonies, 1:1s, tech-debt tracking, and representing the team's technical decisions in leadership conversations.

What You'll Do

• Stay hands-on: ~60–70% of your time is coding, architecture, and system design, even as the team scales.
• Own the backlog with the team's product owner: grooming, estimation, and sprint planning.
• Hold regular 1:1s and check-ins, and flag delays or blockers before they become surprises.
• Partner with the team's tester on coverage and test automation, especially for AI-driven features.
• Track tech debt and flag dependencies approaching end of support, with a clear line open to product.
• Own high-level system architecture and end-to-end workflow design, and explain both clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Represent the team's technical decisions in bi-weekly leadership meetings
• Mentor and coach your team, including performance reviews.
• Build out team process and structure as headcount roughly doubles under you.

Who You Are

You're a proven technical lead who's already done this, not someone looking for their first shot at it. You're genuinely AI-native in how you build, comfortable owning architecture and system design, and you communicate risk and tradeoffs before they become someone else's surprise.

You Must Have

• Proven Team Lead experience: system design and architecture ownership, backlog management and reporting, engineering workflow optimization, presenting and defending timelines to leadership, performance conversations, coaching and mentoring engineers.
• Hands-on experience with agentic AI workflows in development, not just using an AI chat assistant.
• Strong architecture and systems design instincts.
• Experience working in an Agile environment.
• Solid foundation in C#/.NET (.NET 10), TypeScript, and REST API design.
• Real CI/CD ownership.
• Cloud deployment experience (AWS preferred, but not mandatory).
• Unit and integration testing as second nature.

It's a Bonus If You Have

• Vue 3 specifically.
• MongoDB.
• Familiarity with other tools in the tech stack (outlined below)
• Experience navigating a team through active growth.
• Formal performance-review experience (we'll support you here if you're newer to it).
• Startup background, full software development lifecycle ownership, self-directed learning style.
• Frontend: Vue 3, TypeScript, Vite, Tailwind, RekaUI, Vitest, Playwright
• CI/CD: GitHub Actions
• Containerization: Docker

What Success Looks Like

• First 30 days: mostly learning, the product, the roadmap, internal processes and tooling, the domain (CRM, banking, messaging systems, spec-driven development). Leaning on your manager and the product owner to ramp.
• By 60 days: real, low-risk production work, plus a clear read on your own gaps and a plan to close them.
• By 90 days: ramped to full capacity.
• 6–12 months in: full partnership with product on rollouts and optimization, owning release traceability, and moving into higher-leverage work like optimizing client onboarding.

Why Join

• A real career ladder with clear steps and objectives: next stop is Staff-level developer, then a fork into your choice of architecture or management.
• A genuinely AI-native team, not AI-curious: you'd be living spec-driven, agentic development day to day.
• A small, close-knit team that supports each other.
• An opportunity to work at a startup pace, while still having the benefit of a stable, profitable, and growing company.
• $125K to $150K base + bonus + RRSP matching
• Paid vacation starting at 3 weeks.
• Extended health care, dental, and life insurance.