Engineering Manager Role - Fleet SaaS | CAD $120K

BrightOrder Inc.; United States; Remote; USD 78,000 - 85,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental and vision benefits

Fully remote work environment

Job summary

BrightOrder is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead a 7–10 person software team in a fully remote, Canada-eligible role. You will split time between people leadership and hands-on coding, directly contributing to backend and frontend work while guiding architecture and delivery.

The role requires 5+ years in software development, 3+ years of people leadership at established companies, and experience with AWS, Docker, Kubernetes, and modern web stacks (Node.js/React/TypeScript).

Qualifications

• 7+ years software engineering experience with hands-on coding
• 3+ years managing software developers in a real company
• Experience shipping production code in the last year

Responsibilities

• Lead and coach a team of 7–10 developers
• Translate roadmap into sprint plans with Product
• Oversee delivery, release management and QA
• Guide architectural decisions and tech direction
• Contribute code and enforce CI/CD discipline
• Drive AI-first development practices among the team

Skills

Team leadership

Hands-on coding

Cloud platforms

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field

Tools

AWS

Docker

Kubernetes

Node.js

React

TypeScript

.NET

Job description

Engineering Manager Role - Fleet SaaS | CAD $120K — Remote

Role Type & Seniority: This is a classic Engineering Manager / Tech Lead hybrid — sometimes called a \"player-coach\" role. It sits squarely at the Senior EM or Staff-level, requiring both hands-on coding and people leadership. This combination is increasingly valued but also demanding.

Compensation vs. Market: At CAD $110K–$120K, the salary is below Canadian market rates for Engineering Managers in tech, where senior EMs at B2B SaaS companies typically earn CAD $130K–$170K+ in major markets (Toronto, Vancouver). However, BrightOrder is a smaller, niche-market company (fleet management), and the fully remote setup may partially offset this gap depending on your location within Canada.

Skills You'll Build:

• Telematics/IoT domain expertise (GPS, ELD, OBD-II) — a niche with strong demand in logistics tech
• AI-first development practices and tooling — highly transferable to any modern engineering org
• Structured people management: performance reviews, growth planning, incident response ownership

Green Flags: Clear reporting structure, explicit success criteria for year one, and a collaborative (not siloed) culture signal organizational maturity. The role is well-scoped with honest \"not for you\" criteria.

Red Flags: The salary ceiling of CAD $120K may limit long-term retention. The explicit exclusion of founder experience and emphasis on working within structure suggests a company that has had past issues with autonomous decision-makers — worth exploring in interviews.

Fully remote · Eligible to work in Canada

About BrightOrder

BrightOrder builds fleet-management software that keeps fleets safer, smarter and more profitable. Our EMDECS and emdecsone platforms, along with our Telematics, ELD and Trailer Trackers products, help repair shops and fleet operators across North America and the UK track their vehicles, stay compliant and run more efficiently.

The Role

You’ll lead and coach a team of 7–10 developers, own how the team delivers, and still ship production code yourself. You report to the VP of Operations & Customer Experience.

You'll work as a partner, not a solo decision‑maker. The Product lead owns the roadmap, and you help set priorities with them. You assess technology and architecture options and bring clear recommendations to the VP, who makes the final call. This role is for an experienced manager who does their best work inside a team and a structure.

What You'll Own

• Coaching the team: Regular 1:1s, feedback, performance reviews and growth plans for 7–10 developers.
• Prioritization with Product: Turn the roadmap into realistic sprint plans, and flag trade‑offs and risks early.
• Delivery: Sprint execution and release management, so the team ships predictably and with quality.
• Production reliability: Lead incident response, run post‑mortems and make sure the same problem doesn't happen twice.
• Technical recommendations: Evaluate options and recommend architecture and technology decisions to the VP, with clear pros, cons and costs.
• Hands‑on code: Regular backend and frontend contributions, code reviews, quality standards and CI/CD discipline.
• AI‑first development: Drive the team's use of AI coding tools and agents to ship faster, with clear quality standards.

What Success Looks Like in Your First Year

• The team ships on a predictable release schedule.
• Every developer has regular 1:1s and a clear growth plan.
• Incidents have clear ownership, and repeat issues are rare.
• The VP and Product lead trust your estimates and your recommendations.

This Role Isn't for You If

• Your leadership experience is only in a company you founded or owned.
• You haven't shipped production code in the last year.
• You want the final say on the roadmap or architecture. Here, Product owns the roadmap and you recommend technical direction to the VP.
• You want pure management or pure coding. This role is both.

Our Hiring Process

Application questions → Skills assessment → Interview with the VP → Technical interview with the team → Offer

Requirements

• Experience building or managing software that works with telematics data, such as GPS tracking, OBD‑II/CAN bus, device data ingestion or ELD.
• 3+ years managing software developers as an employee of an established company, including 1:1s, performance reviews and hiring. Founder or self‑employed leadership experience alone doesn't meet this requirement.
• Experience managing a team of at least 5 developers at the same time.
• 5+ years writing production code, and you've shipped production code in the last 12 months.
• Hands‑on AWS in production (EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda, CloudWatch).
• Docker and Kubernetes in production.
• Backend experience with .NET or Node.js, and frontend experience with React and TypeScript.
• Owned Agile/Scrum delivery: sprint execution and release management.
• Worked with a Product lead on priorities and requirements.
• Experience in a B2B SaaS product company.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Eligible to work in Canada.

Nice to Have

• Government of Canada security clearance
• Bilingual in English and French
• Experience in fleet management software
• Health, dental and vision benefits
• Fully remote, high‑trust culture built on accountability and autonomy
• Impact that matters: your work keeps fleets running and industries moving
• Continuous learning through mentorship, new tech and AI‑driven innovation
• A team that values integrity, ownership and excellence

Is this Engineering Manager role truly fully remote or is there an office requirement? The role is fully remote with no office requirement. However, you must be eligible to work in Canada, so remote work is restricted to candidates with valid Canadian work authorization. What is the salary range for this position? BrightOrder offers a base salary of CAD $110,000–$120,000 per year, along with health, dental, and vision benefits. Do I need to still write code as an Engineering Manager at BrightOrder? Yes — this is explicitly a \"player-coach\" role. You are expected to make regular backend and frontend code contributions, conduct code reviews, and maintain CI/CD discipline alongside managing your team. What is the hiring process at BrightOrder for this role? The process consists of five stages: application questions, a skills assessment, an interview with the VP, a technical interview with the team, and then an offer. Does founder or self-employed leadership experience count toward the management requirement? No. BrightOrder explicitly requires 3+ years managing software developers as an employee of an established company. Founder or self-employed leadership experience alone does not satisfy this requirement.

Remote work & career advice that actually works.