Software Engineer (Application Platform/Tech Lead)

About Us

At TrustFlight, we are proud to be a global leader in mission-critical software systems and technical services, trusted by aerospace and aviation industries worldwide. Our innovative solutions power the safety and efficiency of aviation operations, ensuring the safety of hundreds of thousands of passengers and crew every month.

Why Join TrustFlight

Our Mission : To revolutionize aviation by delivering digital workflow solutions that enhance safety, streamline operations, and inspire confidence across the industry.

Impact : Over 200,000 users rely on our systems every day for operational safety, compliance management, and mission-critical decision-making.

Core Values : Guided by integrity, responsibility, innovation, and excellence, we are committed to empowering our partners to operate with confidence.

Join us in shaping the future of aviation and making an impact through technology.

Your Role

As a Software Engineer – Application Platform, you’ll help build secure, scalable platform foundations, especially around identity, authentication, and core system design. Beyond your individual technical contributions, you’ll be expected to act as a strong engineering leader within the organization by helping shape technical direction, raising engineering standards, and influencing how teams approach complex platform challenges.

This is an opportunity to have an impact beyond the code you write. You’ll bring technical leadership to architectural discussions, help others navigate difficult engineering decisions, and lead by example through strong ownership, sound judgment, and a commitment to quality. You’ll build trust across teams by sharing knowledge, challenging assumptions constructively, and helping drive initiatives forward.

You bring strong fundamentals in authentication and security, with a clear understanding of sign-in flows, protocol choices, and how identity connects across the broader system. A disciplined testing mindset and solid cloud and deployment knowledge ensure your work is reliable, verifiable, and production-ready.

Success in this role comes from taking ownership, communicating early, sharing context, and documenting decisions clearly. You’ll help teams stay aligned, reduce friction across the platform, and contribute to a culture of engineering excellence across TrustFlight.

What you’ll be doing

Development & Code Quality:

• Design and implement features and fixes using modular, low-disruption approaches that preserve system integrity and long-term maintainability

• Reason about complex, real-world data models, including multi-tenant systems, maintaining a clear mental model of how data is structured, accessed, and evolved

• Play an active role in architectural discussions, helping guide technical decisions based on system constraints, scalability, security, and future growth

• Debug and resolve complex platform issues by working directly with raw data, services, and infrastructure layers

• Uphold and help raise engineering standards through clean, maintainable code, thoughtful technical trade-offs, and strong engineering practices

• Take ownership of complex technical challenges and help drive them from ambiguity through to implementation and delivery

• Take ambiguous, high-stakes technical problems from first principles through to delivery

Testing & Quality Assurance:

• Maintain a strong testing discipline, ensuring all changes are well-covered by appropriate unit, integration, and end-to-end tests

• Advocate for and implement quality-first engineering practices, including test automation and early validation of platform changes

• Lead by example in establishing a high bar for quality, reliability, and maintainability

• Ensure reliability and confidence in releases by validating behavior across services, environments, and tenant boundaries

DevOps & Infrastructure:

• Work confidently with cloud-based infrastructure and deployment practices, contributing to reliable, scalable platform operations

• Collaborate on or support CI/CD pipelines and deployment workflows to enable safe, repeatable releases

• Apply strong foundational knowledge of authentication and security, understanding sign-in flows, protocol choices, and how identity integrates with the broader system

• Help guide platform-level decisions around stability, observability, security, and operational excellence as systems evolve

• Identify opportunities to improve engineering practices, tooling, and platform capabilities across the organization

Leadership, Collaboration & Communication:

• Be a trusted technical voice within the organization, providing leadership through expertise, ownership, sound judgment, and collaboration

• Help shape technical direction and engineering practices, influencing decisions beyond your immediate area of responsibility

• Lead by example, demonstrating strong engineering habits and helping create a culture of accountability, quality, and continuous improvement

• Support and mentor other engineers through knowledge sharing, technical guidance, code reviews, and collaborative problem-solving

• Collaborate effectively across the organization, including engineering, DevOps, product, and customer-facing teams when platform work intersects with delivery or product needs

• Bring clarity to complex technical discussions, helping teams evaluate trade-offs, reach decisions, and move initiatives forward

• Communicate frequently and openly with peers, sharing context, decisions, risks, and trade-offs to maintain alignment

• Produce clear, thorough documentation for all work, proactively sharing outcomes with the platform team and impacted teams during cross-team initiatives

• Stay engaged with platform evolution and industry best practices, continuously improving how the organization builds and operates software

• Identify opportunities to improve engineering practices, tooling, and platform capabilities

What you’ll bring

• 5+ years of software development experience with core platform technologies. Hands-on experience building, shipping, and maintaining production systems using Node.js, PostgreSQL, JavaScript, and TypeScript, with exposure to real-world trade-offs around scalability, reliability, and maintainability, and a solid understanding of how these technologies work together in scalable, maintainable applications.

• Distributed systems and cloud architecture experience. Experience designing or contributing to cloud-based systems, with attention to scalability, fault tolerance, security, and operational concerns.

• Authentication and identity fundamentals. Familiarity with modern authentication and identity concepts (e.g., OAuth2, OpenID Connect, SSO), including secure sign-in flows and how identity integrates with broader system architecture.

• Microservices and API design experience. Experience building and maintaining service-oriented systems and well-structured APIs, with an understanding of versioning, reliability, and how services interact across distributed environments.

• Strong software testing discipline (Unit, Integration, and End-to-End testing). A quality-first mindset with hands-on experience writing and maintaining meaningful tests, understanding where different testing strategies add value, and ensuring confidence in platform changes before release.

• Relational database design and operation. Experience working with relational databases, including schema design, indexing, query optimization, data integrity, and reasoning about complex data models such as multi-tenant systems.

• Strong debugging and troubleshooting. A methodical, detail-oriented approach to diagnosing issues across application code, infrastructure, and data layers, with a willingness to dig deep to identify root causes.

• Clear documentation and communication. Ability to document technical decisions, implementations, and operational processes, and to communicate effectively with both engineering peers and cross-functional teams.

• A growth mindset. A willingness to learn, adapt, and continuously improve technical and product skills in a fast-evolving platform environment.

• Practical familiarity with modern AI tooling. A practical understanding of modern AI capabilities and tooling, including strengths, limitations, and appropriate use cases, with an emphasis on applying AI responsibly to enhance systems, workflows, or developer productivity.

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience. Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

What makes you stand out

• Technical excellence and awareness of platform engineering best practices

• Enjoys mentoring, sharing knowledge, and supporting the growth of other engineers

• Passion for aviation and experience thriving in fast-paced, dynamic environments

Location

This role is based in our Vancouver office. This is an on-site role with room for flexibility, because we know life doesn't always fit a 9-to-5 mould.

Why Join Us

• See Your Impact : Your contributions directly enhance the safety and efficiency of aviation operations, affecting hundreds of thousands of passengers and crew every month.

• Build and Create : Be part of an environment where you'll have the freedom to innovate, build, and create solutions that define the future of digital aviation.

• Growth Opportunity : Join us at an inflection point as we scale our revenue growth using cutting-edge AI tools and SaaS best practices.

• Real Ownership : This is a small platform team with a wide remit. You'll have genuine latitude over how our foundations evolve, and see the effect of those decisions across every product we ship.

Also, we offer

• Health & Wellness : Comprehensive benefits package including health and dental benefits. Paid time off plus an extra day off to celebrate your birthday.

• Invest in your future : Take advantage of our company contribution to pension/RRSP matching program to grow your savings while you work.

• Professional Growth : As a fast-growing company, we offer incredible opportunities for career advancement and skill development.

• Competitive salary range : We place huge importance on the contribution and experience you bring to the team. The base pay offered is based on location and may vary depending on skills, job-related knowledge, experience, and internal equity.

  For this role, the range is: $120K - $140K/year

TrustFlight is an equal-opportunity employer. We work together to create the most talented team that celebrates inclusivity, diversity and equality in a serious way. We are committed to building a team that represents a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and skills. All candidates will receive consideration for this role without regard for race, nationality, colour, religion, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, or age. Our inclusive culture empowers all of us to inspire, enlighten and thrive.