Tech Lead

Being part of Air Canada is to become part of an iconic Canadian symbol, recently ranked the best Airline in North America. Let your career take flight by joining our diverse and vibrant team at the leading edge of passenger aviation.

Join Air Canada—an iconic Canadian brand and North America's top-ranked airline—as we lead the next wave of digital transformation in aviation. With major IT initiatives underway and a strong commitment to innovation, this is a unique opportunity to help shape the future of travel technology.

We're looking for a dynamic and experienced Tech Lead to guide engineering teams in delivering scalable, high-quality software solutions. This role blends hands-on development with strategic leadership, driving architectural decisions, mentoring developers, and aligning technical execution with long-term business goals.

As a champion of engineering excellence, the Tech Lead fosters a culture of innovation, simplicity, and continuous improvement. You'll collaborate across disciplines, promote Agile best practices, and explore emerging technologies—including AI and machine learning—to ensure our platforms remain reliable, future-ready, and impactful.

Let your career take flight by joining a team that's redefining the digital passenger experience at the forefront of global aviation.

Responsibilities:

• Lead and mentor software engineering teams across the full stack—front-end, back-end, cloud, and DevOps—to deliver high-quality, scalable solutions.
• Own architectural decisions and ensure alignment with enterprise-wide technology standards and long-term product vision.
• Actively contribute to development efforts, modeling best practices in coding, testing, and performance optimization.
• Define and evolve technical strategy, including CI/CD pipelines, DevSecOps principles, and release automation.
• Champion modern design patterns such as microservices, serverless, and modular component architecture.
• Drive and review low-level design specifications, ensuring technical clarity, feasibility, and alignment with high-level architecture.
• Conduct thorough code reviews and evaluate test plans and unit test scripts to uphold quality, reliability, and maintainability standards.
• Collaborate with Product Owners, Designers, and Scrum Masters to co-create user stories, define acceptance criteria, and balance technical feasibility with business priorities.
• Drive adoption of emerging technologies including GenAI, agentic systems, and AI-assisted development tools.
• Establish and enforce coding standards, testing frameworks, and documentation practices to ensure maintainability and scalability.
• Monitor and improve engineering metrics (e.g., commit velocity, test coverage, deployment frequency) to drive team productivity.
• Foster a culture of continuous learning, innovation, and psychological safety within the team.
• Communicate technical concepts clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Participate in cross-team initiatives to set technical guidelines and promote consistency across pods and platforms.
• Support post-release activities including debugging, performance tuning, and incident resolution.

Required

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field.
• Minimum 5 years of experience in software development, with at least 2–3 years in a technical leadership role.
• Proven ability to lead engineering teams and make architectural decisions across the full stack.
• Deep expertise in modern frameworks and languages (e.g., React, Angular, , Java, NestJS).
• Strong experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), container orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes), and infrastructure automation.
• Experience working with relational databases (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL) and/or NoSQL databases (e.g., MongoDB, Cassandra).
• Solid understanding of data access frameworks, industry standards, and best practices for database integration and performance optimization.
• Proficiency in RESTful APIs, OpenAPI/Swagger, and integration patterns.
• Experience with Agile methodologies, backlog management, and cross-functional collaboration.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to align technical decisions across teams and explain concepts to non-technical audiences.
• Demonstrated ability to coach teams, manage technical priorities, and drive delivery excellence.
• Demonstrate punctuality and dependability to support overall team success in a fast-paced environment.

Assets

• Experience with Mulesoft or other Java-based ESBs (e.g., IBM IIB, Tibco).
• Exposure to API management platforms such as Apigee, IBM API Connect, or Mulesoft.
• Familiarity with Generative AI, machine learning model integration, or AI-assisted development tools.
• Background in the airline or travel industry, with an understanding of domain-specific challenges and systems.
• Certifications in cloud architecture, Agile leadership, or security frameworks (e.g., AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Certified ScrumMaster, CISSP).

Personal Attributes

• Inspires and energizes engineering teams with a high level of enthusiasm, fostering a culture of excellence and ownership.
• Demonstrates a forward-thinking, innovative mindset—constantly exploring emerging technologies and unconventional solutions to complex challenges.
• Builds and sustains a culture of trust, transparency, and psychological safety, enabling open dialogue and empowering diverse perspectives.
• Challenges assumptions and the status quo with curiosity and courage, driving continuous improvement and elevating team performance.
• Balances strategic vision with hands-on technical guidance, ensuring alignment between business goals and engineering execution.
• Leads by example with integrity, resilience, and a commitment to mentoring others toward their full potential.

Conditions of Employment:

Candidates must be eligible to work in the country of interest at the time any offer of employment is made and are responsible for obtaining any required work permits, visas, or other authorizations necessary for employment. Prior to their start date, candidates will also need to provide proof of their eligibility to work in the country of interest.

Linguistic Requirements

Based on equal qualifications, 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 work environment which highlights employees' unique contributions to our company's success.

As an equal opportunity employer, we welcome applications from all to help us build a diverse workforce which reflects the diversity of our customers, and communities, in which we live and serve.

Air Canada thanks all candidates for their interest; however only those selected to continue in the process will be contacted.