Development Lead - Mobile Application Air Canada

Joining Air Canada is about belonging to a Canadian symbol, Air Canada recently voted best airline in North America. Take your career off by joining our innovative and diverse team at the forefront of passenger air transport.

The Development Lead is a seasoned engineering leader who adopts a hands-on approach and takes end-to-end ownership of the Air Canada mobile application: iOS and Android clients, back-end-for-front-end (BFF) and supporting API services, as well as build, deploy, and operational tooling that makes the application available to customers. This role combines technical leadership (architecture, technical roadmap, engineering standards, and technical debt strategy for the mobile platform) with execution leadership (code quality, release readiness, and production stability) across all mobile delivery teams.

As the most experienced engineer on the mobile application team, the Development Lead serves as both the design authority for the mobile platform and the primary implementation owner, within the constraints of Air Canada's enterprise IT architecture. This role keeps the application fast, reliable, secure, and accessible during the most critical moments for customers, from booking to check-in, boarding, and operational irregularities, while ensuring the codebase remains efficient, up to date, and viable over the long term.

Responsibilities:

• Take responsibility for the technical vision, architecture, and medium- to long-term technical roadmap of the mobile application for iOS and Android platforms, as well as the backend (BFF, APIs, and integrations), in alignment with company, solution architecture, and product strategy.
• Break down complex requirements into clear technical tasks, anticipate risks early, and guide the team through implementation and validation.
• Act as the design authority for the mobile platform and primary implementation owner within enterprise architecture boundaries; define and enforce mobile architecture patterns and standards, and elevate organizational or cross-domain decisions to Enterprise IT Architecture and leadership.
• Ensure production release readiness, including quality criteria compliance (testing, security checks, performance, accessibility), staged progressive deployments with halt criteria, operational runbooks and documentation, observability coverage, and mitigation plans accounting for already deployed app binaries that cannot be rolled back.
• Respect and enforce technical standards for coding, testing, documentation, security, accessibility, observability, and responsible AI practices across the mobile application.
• Foster high-quality peer code reviews, including AI-generated code, with a focus on maintainability, performance, reliability, security, and adherence to approved patterns.
• Lead and support the implementation of complex or high-risk features, balancing delivery timelines, technical quality, and operational risk.
• Take responsibility for the test strategy (unit, integration, UI and end-to-end, API contracts, performance, and OS/device compatibility), test automation, and AI evaluation coverage to ensure consistent quality standards and defect prevention.
• Improve CI/CD pipeline efficiency for mobile and backend components, implement automation and code signing, release generation, and AI-assisted development workflows to increase deployment frequency and developer productivity.
• Collaborate with Product Owners, QA leads, designers, and delivery project managers to ensure clarity, feasibility, testability, and timely decision-making regarding scope changes.
• Take ownership of production issues from specialized teams affecting the mobile application; coordinate triage, restore service, and communicate progress and mitigation measures to stakeholders.
• Conduct root-cause analysis for incidents and defects affecting the mobile application and implement corrective and preventive measures; ensure lessons learned translate into backlog items that are seen through to completion.
• Establish and maintain clear, accurate, and up-to-date technical and operational documentation to facilitate maintenance, onboarding, and operational support.
• Monitor and improve delivery and quality metrics, such as defect rates, PR turnaround times, deployment frequency, rollback/hotfix frequency, and reliability indicators (crash-free sessions, ANR rates, API latency, and error rates); leverage data to drive improvements.
• Provide technical coaching and daily mentoring through pair programming, feedback, and guidance; foster a culture of craftsmanship, accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Manage the mobile technical debt register and remediation roadmap: identify, scope, and prioritize debt, make its impact visible to the product team and leadership, and reserve dedicated capacity for its reduction.
• Ensure platform currency: deliver annual iOS and OS version releases, toolchain updates, and Apple App Store / Google Play target API and policy requirements ahead of deadlines; maintain the supported OS and device matrix; and prune deprecated code, unused features, and end-of-life dependencies.
• Design and evolve BFF and API contracts adopting a mobile-first approach (payload efficiency, versioning, backward compatibility with older app versions still in use), and define the strategy for feature flags, remote configuration, kill switches, and minimum supported version policies.
• Take ownership of the entire mobile release process in collaboration with the product team: release cadence, branching strategy, code freezes, regression testing, and deployment.
• Integrate mobile security (OWASP MASVS), privacy by design, and accessibility (WCAG AA) into design and implementation, collaborating with Privacy (Legal) and Corporate Security on consent, data minimization, and app store privacy disclosures.
• Remain hands-on: design, develop, test, and debug client and backend code, and analyze and fix production defects and incidents.

Personal Qualities

• Inspire and energize engineering teams by demonstrating high enthusiasm and fostering a culture of excellence and empowerment.
• Show an innovative and forward-looking mindset, constantly exploring emerging technologies and non-traditional solutions to tackle complex challenges.
• Build and maintain a culture of trust, transparency, and psychological safety to enable open dialogue and diverse perspectives.
• Challenge assumptions and the status quo with curiosity and courage to drive continuous improvement and team performance.
• Balance strategic vision with hands-on technical guidance, ensuring alignment between business goals and technical execution.
• Lead by example with integrity, resilience, and a commitment to mentoring colleagues to reach their full potential.

Qualifications

Mandatory

• Bachelor's degree in computer science or a related field.
• At least five (5) years of software development experience in a production environment, including at least four (4) years of experience building and launching large-scale consumer-facing mobile applications via Apple App Store or Google Play.
• Proven experience leading project implementation within agile teams, with strong hands-on expertise in native iOS development (Swift), working knowledge of Android (Kotlin), and backend BFF/API service development (e.g., Node.js, NestJS, Java).
• Proven experience managing technical debt, OS upgrades, and third-party SDK lifecycles within a long-running production mobile application.
• Strong experience managing mobile app launches and app store processes, CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and modern dev-ops practices.
• Proven ability to enforce engineering standards, ensure code quality, and support sprint-level delivery commitments.
• Excellent communication skills and ability to collaborate effectively with both technical and non-technical colleagues.
• Punctuality and reliability to drive overall team success in a fast-paced environment.

Assets

• Experience with AI-assisted development tools, prompt engineering, or AI evaluation frameworks.
• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and cloud-native architecture patterns.
• Knowledge of API platforms, integration technologies, or enterprise systems.
• Experience with mobile observability (crash reporting, real-user monitoring) and feature flag / remote configuration platforms.
• Experience in airline, travel, or other large-scale, regulated, or mission-critical environments.

Employment Conditions

Candidates must be eligible to work in the country concerned at the time an offer of employment is presented and are responsible for obtaining necessary work permits, visas, or other authorizations. Proof of eligibility must be provided before the start date.

Language Requirements

All things being equal, preference will be given to bilingual candidates.

Diversity and Inclusion

Air Canada is strongly committed to diversity and inclusion and aims to create a healthy, accessible, and rewarding workplace that highlights the unique contribution of our employees to our company's success.

As an equal opportunity employer, we encourage diverse applications to build a workforce that is varied and representative of our customers and the communities where we live and serve.