Software Engineering Team Lead - Canada - FTE

About Very

(Remote – Canada)

Very is a fully distributed technology firm led by expert problem-solvers who create efficient, scalable solutions that move commercial, industrial, and consumer products from pilot to production in record time.

We believe that real innovation happens in the grind — working shoulder to shoulder with clients who are building the future. Our team thrives on that energy. When we’re not helping clients deliver business-critical outcomes, we’re refining our craft and celebrating what it means to do hard things well.

We’ve built a collaborative, tight-knit culture that thrives in both remote and in-person settings. We’ve won numerous workplace awards over the years, including Great Place to Work certification and recognition from Parity.org as a Best Company for Women to Advance.

Our clients include well-known brands like Vizio, Peloton, Clear, iHeart Radio, and Fellowes — all determined to leverage connected devices and AI to drive meaningful impact. Our job is simple: help them win.

As a Software Engineering Team Lead, you'll lead a team of 3 to 5 engineers embedded in a client's engineering organization through Very's staff augmentation model, working on high-traffic, business-critical systems. Your team's main focus is AWS: designing a multi-region architecture for redundancy and scale, and defining it as code with AWS CDK and Terraform. The team also works across the stack, from backend services to front-end features.

This is a full-time, long-term role that combines people leadership with hands-on technical work. You'll set direction for your team, own their delivery and growth, and stay close enough to the code to review designs, unblock engineers and step in during incidents. You'll work in the client's codebase, tools and processes, partner day to day with their engineering and product leaders, and stay part of the Very team. At Very, a manager is accountable for both what the team ships and how the team works.

This is not an easy role. You'll work under real deadlines with a client who expects you and your team to be available, proactive and delivering from day one. If you like doing hard things well, you'll fit right in.

What You’ll Be Working On

As the leader of an embedded team within the client's engineering organization, you'll:

• Lead a team of 3 to 5 software engineers.
• This is a player-coach role: you’ll lead the team and also spend a meaningful part of your week as a hands-on engineer, writing and reviewing code alongside them.
• Plan and prioritize the team's work with client engineering and product leaders, and own delivery against sprint and roadmap commitments.
• Own technical requirements and lead high-level and low-level design for cloud solutions on AWS.
• Lead the design and rollout of multi-region AWS architecture, including redundancy, failover and disaster recovery for critical services.
• Set standards for how the team defines, deploys and maintains infrastructure as code using AWS CDK and Terraform.
• Guide the team in building and scaling complex, microservice-based, event-driven systems.
• Oversee feature work across backend and frontend components, and contribute code where it helps the team.
• Set the team's testing strategy and automation across the stack.
• Own the team's production support and incident response, and maintain system health, performance and reliability.
• Collaborate across engineering, design and product to deliver high-quality outcomes.
• Identify and proactively address potential technical or operational risks before they affect customers.

You and your team will operate in a modern, polyglot environment that includes:

• Cloud: AWS (Lambda, ECS, Fargate, RDS, DynamoDB, CloudFront, CloudWatch, SNS, SQS)
• Infrastructure as Code: AWS CDK, Terraform
• Backend: Python, Node.js, TypeScript, distributed APIs and worker services
• Frontend: React, TypeScript
• DevOps: Docker, GitHub Actions, CI/CD pipelines
• Databases: Postgres, Redis, DynamoDB
• Testing: Jest, Cypress, Pytest and other automated test frameworks
• Observability: Logging, monitoring, alerting and production diagnostics

Outcomes

• Build a Strong Team: Retain engineers who deliver with minimal oversight and hold a high bar for quality.
• Deliver Multi-Region Resilience: Lead the team in standing up a highly available, multi-region AWS footprint that keeps critical services running through failures.
• Scale With Confidence: Make sure systems handle growth and traffic spikes with strong performance and controlled cloud costs.
• Codify Infrastructure: Make sure the team delivers clean, reusable, well-documented CDK and Terraform that others can build on.
• Deliver High-Quality Features : Make sure your team ships secure, reliable code that meets requirements, follows standards and delivers measurable business value.
• Be a Trusted Partner: Integrate your team fully with the client's organization and become the leader they rely on.

Responsibilities

• Manage a team of 3 to 5 engineers
• Guide the design and upkeep of AWS infrastructure built with AWS CDK and Terraform.
• Lead architecture decisions for multi-region deployment, redundancy and scaling.
• Review designs and code across frontend, backend and cloud components.
• Make sure the team's code and infrastructure are clean, scalable and secure and meet the client's and Very's engineering standards.
• Make sure automated tests cover all layers of the stack.
• Own the team's deployment practices, CI/CD pipelines, logging, monitoring and alerting.
• Run the team's rituals (standups, sprint planning, retrospectives) within the client's engineering processes and tools.
• Lead the team's production support and incident response, including diagnosing and resolving production issues.
• Report on team health, delivery and risks to client stakeholders and Very leadership, and drive documentation and knowledge sharing.

Minimum Qualifications

General Experience

• BS or higher in Computer Science, Software Engineering or a related field
• 8+ years of professional software development experience
• 2+ years directly managing engineers, including hiring, performance management and career development
• Significant hands-on experience designing, building and operating production systems on AWS
• Proven experience with infrastructure as code using AWS CDK and/or Terraform
• Hands-on experience building production front-end applications with React and TypeScript
• Full software development lifecycle experience, including requirements, design, implementation, testing, deployment and operations
• Experience building complex, event-driven, microservice-based systems
• Strong understanding of production-grade system reliability, observability and security
  
   

Great to have

• Ad tech experience (for example, real-time bidding (RTB) and real-time ad auctions, working with SSPs, DSPs, ad exchanges or header bidding/Prebid ) is a strong plus
• Experience leading teams embedded with clients or distributed across locations (staff augmentation or consulting) is a strong plus

Technical Proficiency

• Deep expertise in AWS, including designing and running highly available, multi-region architectures (redundancy, failover, data replication, disaster recovery)
• Hands-on proficiency with AWS CDK and Terraform
• Strong experience with AWS services
• Experience with scaling, performance tuning and cloud cost optimization
• Strong backend development skills in Python and/or Node.js/TypeScript
• Strong proficiency with React and TypeScript, including reviewing front-end code and guiding front-end architecture
• Skilled in relational and non-relational data modeling and SQL development
• Ability to build and support CI/CD automation (GitHub Actions)
• Experience debugging distributed production systems at scale

Requirements

• Must be based in Canada.
• Ability to work with significant overlap with US business hours.

Skills

• Client Obsessed: Keeps the client’s success front and center. Measures technical choices by their business impact.
• Clear Communicator: Gives direct, timely feedback to their team and collaborates effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Quality-Driven: Holds themselves and their team to high standards for code quality and reliability.
• Ownership Mindset: Takes responsibility for the team's results and for solutions that work in real-world conditions.
• Problem Solver: Thrives in complexity and finds solutions even when requirements are evolving.

Compensation & Benefits

Base Compensation: $126,500 CAD, commensurate with experience.
Variable Compensation: Up to 10% annual performance bonus

**Note: To qualify for this role, you must reside in Canada and be legally authorized to work in Canada. We do not sponsor work visas. 

Perks & Benefits:

• Group RRSP match (Employer contributes 4% of your annual income)
• $150 USD/mo cell/internet stipend
• $600 USD/yr home office equipment stipend
• Extended healthcare, dental, and vision insurance
• Professional development stipend
• Loaned MacBook Pro
• Annual team retreat

Why Work for Very

We do not promise an easy ride — we promise meaningful work.

We work hard because our clients’ success depends on it, and we take pride in delivering when others can’t. We collaborate closely, move fast, and stay grounded in results. We take joy in the process — in the problem-solving, the iteration, and the shared wins that come from doing the hard things well.

If you’re looking for a place where every project matters, where the standards are high, and where you’ll grow by pushing yourself and others — welcome to Very.

Interviewing for a new company is a serious time commitment for all parties involved. Please take the time to read this and thoughtfully consider if we would be a good fit for one another.  No agencies. Seriously. #LI-Remote

**Note: To qualify for this role, you must reside in Canada