Staff Software Engineer

About Us   Air-tek builds software that powers one of the most operationally complex industries in the world.   Our platform helps airlines recover from disruption by intelligently coordinating passenger rebooking, accommodation, transportation, and communications in real time. Every engineering decision directly impacts airlines and the millions of passengers who rely on them.   We've quietly established ourselves as a trusted technology partner to airlines around the world. While we intentionally operate in stealth during this stage of growth, our product-market fit is strong, our customer base continues to expand globally, and we're investing heavily in the engineering organization that will support the next stage of our evolution.   We're a company that values technical excellence, thoughtful collaboration, and continuous learning. We care deeply about building software the right way, challenging each other's ideas respectfully, and creating an environment where talented engineers can do the best work of their careers.    The Role   We're looking for a Staff Software Engineer who wants to solve the kinds of engineering problems that don't have obvious answers.   This isn't a role where you'll simply implement tickets or own one service. You'll help shape technical direction across multiple teams, influence architectural decisions, mentor senior engineers, and tackle the complex systems challenges that emerge as a successful product scales globally.   You'll spend a significant portion of your time writing production code, designing systems, reviewing architecture, and partnering with Engineering, Product, and Delivery to turn ambiguity into scalable solutions.   You'll have the autonomy to identify problems worth solving. Not just execute someone else's roadmap. 

What You'll Do

Shape Technical Direction 

• Partner with Principal Engineers to design and deliver complex technical initiatives spanning multiple teams. 

• Drive engineering decisions that improve scalability, reliability, and developer productivity. 

• Define technical standards, design patterns, and engineering best practices. 

• Make thoughtful trade-offs between short-term delivery and long-term maintainability. 

Build Systems That Scale 

• Design and implement highly available distributed systems supporting airline operations worldwide. 

• Improve system resiliency, observability, performance, and operational excellence. 

• Reduce technical complexity through better architecture and platform investments. 

• Help evolve our services as our customers and product continue to grow. 

Multiply Engineering Impact 

• Mentor senior and intermediate engineers through design reviews, code reviews, and technical coaching. 

• Raise the engineering bar through thoughtful feedback and technical leadership. 

• Help teams navigate ambiguity and make sound engineering decisions. 

• Influence across teams through trust and technical credibility rather than formal authority. 

Drive Execution 

• Partner closely with Product and Engineering leaders to scope large initiatives. 

• Identify technical risks early and help teams navigate them. 

• Lead incident response for complex production issues when needed. 

• Continuously improve how we build, deploy, monitor, and operate software.

About You

We're less interested in years of experience than depth of impact, but most successful candidates bring: 

• Experience leading architecture for complex production systems. 

• Deep backend engineering experience using C#, .NET, Java, Go, or similar technologies. 

• Experience building distributed systems, APIs, event-driven architectures, or high-throughput services. 

• Strong understanding of cloud-native application design. 

• Experience improving reliability, scalability, and operational maturity. 

• A track record of influencing engineering organizations beyond your immediate team. 

• Excellent communication skills and the ability to simplify complex technical problems. 

• A passion for mentoring engineers and raising engineering standards. 

Experience with React, Vue, TypeScript, MongoDB, RabbitMQ, Docker, Kubernetes, and AWS is beneficial but not required. 

What Success Looks Like

Within your first six months you'll be expected to: 

• Lead one or more high-impact technical initiatives spanning multiple teams. 

• Improve an area of our platform's architecture, reliability, or scalability. 

• Become a trusted technical partner for Engineering and Product leadership. 

• Help establish engineering patterns that other teams adopt. 

• Raise the technical bar through mentorship, design reviews, and technical leadership. 

Why Join Air-tek

Build software that matters. 

• Our platform helps airlines recover from disruption during some of the most operationally challenging moments they face. 

Solve genuinely difficult engineering problems. 

• We're tackling distributed systems, integrations, reliability, scalability, and operational complexity...not CRUD applications. 

Influence the future of the platform. 

• You'll have meaningful ownership over architectural direction and engineering standards during a period of rapid growth. 

Stay hands-on. 

• This is a Staff Engineer role for people who love writing code. We believe technical leadership starts with technical credibility. 

Work alongside exceptional engineers. 

• We value curiosity, humility, thoughtful debate, and continuous improvement. Strong ideas win regardless of title. 

Grow with us. 

• We're scaling our engineering organization, modernizing our platform, and investing in the people who will shape what comes next.

 

This role is based in Toronto and follows our hybrid model of three days per week in our office, conveniently located near Union Station. 

If you're energized by solving difficult engineering problems, influencing technical direction, and building software that operates at global scale, we'd love to hear from you.