What you'll be building
Across this area, the work in flight includes boarding that self-cures — failures prevented or automatically remediated instead of becoming cases when someone works by hand. Automated movement, so partner hierarchy changes and merchants moving between portfolios stop being manual and risky. Automation of bank account changes and the file builds that go out to processors. A case workflow with a real dashboard behind it, rush handling for what's genuinely urgent, and generated labels, MIDs and assignments rather than typed ones. Unified, progressive boarding so merchants, submerchants and partners all come through one path. And migration off the legacy systems still sitting underneath some of it.
The role
One team (or a few) — its delivery, its people, its standards — performs because you own all of it, full time. You'll manage one to several teams as a full-time craft; the team's performance is your contribution, and the leverage flows through judgment, hiring, coaching, standards, and the conditions you create, not your own commits. You can still pick up the keyboard when the work genuinely calls for it — you just won't lean on it as your contribution.
Responsibilities
Craft — Hiring, feedback, and performance management operate as a system, not events: the bar is consistent, the assessments are honest, and underperformance is addressed early and directly. You can interrogate a design and hold the technical bar in any conversation. AI-native practice is a team standard with expectations, not an encouraged option.
Impact — The team delivers predictably and sustainably; commitments to product, design, and business partners hold, and you're trusted because they keep holding. The team's outcomes — the metrics it exists to move — move on your watch, in partnership with your Product and Design peers. The team is instrumented through the company's engineering management platform — the outcomes it exists to move, the paired delivery-and-quality signals beneath them (a speed signal only counts when its quality pair is held), and the activity beneath those — and improves on what it measures, with the fix nameable. A metric that improved while its outcome didn't is a flag, not a win.
Ownership — You own the team's operational health: SLO coverage exists and is honored, deploy frequency and lead time improve, on-call stays humane, and the team never ships untested work downstream as someone else's problem. During high-pressure moments, you orchestrate the response — outward communication, decision-making, protecting the team's ability to recover — owning it and ensuring it's led well. You actively identify the team's single points of failure — including yourself — and close them: named shadows, deliberate rotation, documented knowledge.
Influence — Engineers grow into and beyond their levels — some past you, into roles you championed. You're measured on the team's outcomes alongside the team's senior engineer, each through your own lever: you own delivery, people, and conditions; the senior engineer owns technical direction — respected and amplified, never overridden.
Judgment — You know when to protect the team and when to push it; when to pick up the keyboard and when doing so would steal the growth moment; which battles to escalate and which to absorb. Debt and platform work get real roadmap space because you make the tradeoff explicit rather than silently mortgaging the future.
What Success Looks Like
You'll be succeeding when commitments hold quarter after quarter, your hires raise the bar, an underperformance case was handled early and fairly, engineers you developed now operate a level up — and no part of the team's operation depends on a single head — including yours.
Candidate Requirements
Experience managing engineers full time — hiring, performance, and delivery accountability.
Sufficient technical depth to hold the bar in design reviews, incidents, and roadmap debates.
Typically ~7+ years of experience including people leadership — a guide, never a gate.
Strong technical background in Node.js/TypeScript systems, sufficient to evaluate designs and operational health (messaging, latency, reliability).
Comfort with observability tooling (Datadog or similar) for the team's services.
Experience running hiring processes for backend engineers and maintaining a high technical bar.
Experience partnering effectively with senior technical leaders (Staff+ engineers).
Nice to Have
Prior individual-contributor experience as a Senior or Staff Node.js engineer.
What’s Preferred
Experience in FinTech, payments, banking, or other transaction-heavy systems — where correctness, data integrity, and availability were obligations, not features.
Familiarity with PCI DSS or other regulated, sensitive financial data — you've built or operated systems where cardholder data, compliance scope, and audit evidence shaped engineering decisions.
Work Environment & Culture
We believe that performance and experience go hand in hand - an exceptional employee experience is earned through contribution. We are a results-driven team, grounded in our core values: ownership, authenticity, service, trust, innovation, and camaraderie.
Our culture is built for those who want to make an impact. We challenge each other to grow, celebrate progress, and support one another through shared goals and real connection. Whether you're building technology, serving clients, or supporting internal teams, you’ll be part of a company that empowers you to perform at your best and be known for results.
Compensation and Benefits
Compensation range: $144,797k - $163,277k CAD
We invest in the whole employee - personally and professionally. Our benefits package is designed to support your well-being, growth, and success - both inside and outside of work.
Financial Wellness
Bonus programs
Financial wellness resources and employee discount programs
Health & Well-being
Medical, dental, and vision coverage
Mental health support for employees and dependents through Lyra Health
Family planning and women’s health benefits through Carrot
Gym membership reimbursement and virtual wellness programs (including yoga)
Time Off
3 weeks PTO to start, with unlimited PTO after year one
Growth & Development
Education expense reimbursement
Leadership development programs
Certified Payments Professional (CPP) certification support
We believe great performance starts with feeling supported - and we’ve built our benefits with that in mind.
Traditional Physical Requirements
Requires prolonged sitting, standing, bending, stooping and stretching.
Requires the ability to lift 10 pounds.
Requires eye-hand coordination, manual dexterity and a normal range of hearing and vision (with or without correction).
Join our team at Priority Commerce and be part of a dynamic and innovative company that is transforming the financial technology landscape. Together, we can shape the future of payments and banking solutions while providing unmatched value to our clients.
