Senior Full Stack Developer

Role Profile

Title: Senior Full Stack Developer

Location: Ottawa

Industry: Technology | Aviation

Employment Type: Full-time, Permanent

Reporting To: Technology Development Manager

Role Purpose

NATS Growth is focused on turning NATS’ operational, technical and data expertise into scalable platforms and services for airports, ANSPs, airlines, and adjacent aviation markets. The Senior Full Stack Developer role sits in the NATS Growth CTO function, which provides the technology leadership, architecture, engineering and assurance needed to convert that ambition into secure, compliant and commercially sustainable capability.

The NATS Growth platforms power mission-critical systems deployed in highly secure, cloud and edge environments for airports and Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) worldwide. As a Senior Full Stack Developer, you will be involved in and provide technical leadership for the design, implementation, testing, QA, review, and sustainment of the NATS Growth technology platforms and services/products that sit on the platforms. You will build and evolve full-stack web applications and services, from responsive TypeScript/React front ends and real-time data pipelines to robust PostgreSQL-backed APIs, that give airport and ANSP users live operational insight. You will deliver secure, safe, well designed and implemented software codebases that adhere to NATS Growth standards and industry best practices.

Key Accountabilities

Full Stack Web Development

• Design, build and maintain full-stack web applications using TypeScript across the front end and back end

• Develop modern, accessible and performant user interfaces using React popular React frameworks (e.g. TanStack ecosystem, NextJS, Angular)

• Design relational data models and schemas, and own database performance through query optimization in PostgreSQL

• Build and maintain real-time data flows using Kafka and WebSockets, delivering low-latency updates from back-end services to the browser

• Design and implement secure authentication and authorisation models (e.g. OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, SSO, role-based access control) across web applications and APIs

• Design and document REST and event-driven APIs, ensuring versioning, consistency and backward compatibility

Software Design, Implementation, Review, Testing, Sustainment

• Leadership of software design, implementation, review, testing, and sustainment

• Architect software modules/components, including web front ends, APIs and data layers, ensuring performance, maintainability, and usability of real-time systems

• Lead and contribute to technical design discussions and architectural decision-making

• Develop prototypes, proof-of-concept systems, and internal tools to support innovation and product evolution, weighing business and technical factors

• Develop secondary software utilities, test applications, and prototype applications, actively identifying new opportunities for such software applications to make positive business and customer impacts

• Conduct and lead code reviews, ensuring adherence to coding standards and best practices

• Maintain, troubleshoot, diagnose, and repair existing system software

• Optimise software resource utilisation, including database and front-end performance, for cost efficiency and reliability

• Respond to support incidents and perform root-cause analysis

• Provide design, implementation, and sustainment for legacy software and technology deployments across the legacy NATS Growth portfolio

• Ensure alignment of developed software with NATS Growth’s security standards and industry best practices

• Lead security and compliance audits and implementation of improvements

Documentation & Best Practices

• Generate and maintain detailed software documentation and update best practices regularly

• Conduct and lead design and document reviews, ensuring adherence to standards and best practices

• Develop training materials and conduct training sessions for teams across the CTO organisation and other internal teams within NATS Growth

• Interface with internal and external customers for software requirements management and acceptance testing

Automation & Continuous Improvement

• Leadership of the development and sustainment of automation tools and practices

• Proactively identify and implement significantly beneficial operational task automation

• Identify opportunities to streamline processes and improve system reliability, specifically focused on improved business outcomes of NATS Growth and its customers

• Leadership of the design, documentation, and evolution of best practices

• Proactively identify software pain points and propose solutions

• Define and track metrics to measure software quality, security and safety, and drive continuous improvement

• Reporting of these metrics, their impacts, evolution over time and any proposed improvements to the CTO leadership team

• Drive continuous improvement in software quality, architecture, and development processes

Collaboration & Knowledge Sharing

• Provide structured feedback to the CTO leadership team for improvements and optimisations

• Provide and accept feedback on your work to and from team members

• Produce documentation, manuals, user guides and other technical documentation

• Provide mentorship for junior and intermediate team members

Key Skills, Experience & Capabilities

• Bachelor’s degree-level education or equivalent experience in computer science, engineering, technology, systems or a related technical field

• Minimum of 5 years of relevant experience in software development

• Proven experience delivering complex, production-grade software systems into mission-critical deployments under strict regulatory and compliance requirements

• Advanced, production experience with TypeScript across front-end and back-end (e.g. Node.js) development

• Strong experience designing, building and integrating REST APIs, with exposure to event-driven architectures

• Experience building distributed systems and communication technologies for mission-critical, latency-sensitive applications

• Advanced experience developing real-time, mission-critical applications

• Sound knowledge of software development principles

• Strong relational database expertise, ideally PostgreSQL, including schema design, normalisation, query optimisation, indexing and performance tuning

• Proven experience building complex front ends with React and React-based frameworks

• Experience implementing real-time features using WebSockets (or similar, e.g. Server-Sent Events) and event streaming platforms such as Kafka

• Solid understanding of authentication and authorisation models (OAuth 2.0, OIDC, JWT, session management, RBAC) and web security best practices (e.g. OWASP Top 10)

• Experience with automated testing across the stack (e.g. unit, integration and end-to-end testing with tools such as Vitest, Jest, or Playwright)

• Strong knowledge of security standards and best practices

• Proven experience working within Agile teams using Scrum and Kanban, with the ability to contribute to sprint planning, estimation, and continuous improvement of team processes.

• Familiarity with Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, and cloud-native technologies

• Proficient with Git, Jira, Linux and modern development tooling

• Must be a team player and willing to learn

• Proven ability to mentor and support junior and intermediate developers

• Excellent analytical, critical thinking, written, and oral communication skills in English

• Must be able to operate with a high degree of confidentiality, professional judgement and personal accountability

• Must be able to meet any role-specific security, regulatory or customer access requirements as required (e.g. security vetting)

Desired Qualifications

• Experience with server-side rendering or full-stack React frameworks (e.g. TanStack Start, Next.js, Remix)

• Experience with ORMs and query builders (e.g. Drizzle, Prisma, Kysely)

• Familiarity with observability tooling (e.g. OpenTelemetry, Grafana)

• Experience with accessibility standards (WCAG) and UX collaboration

• Experience with PostgreSQL extensions or advanced features (e.g. PostGIS, partitioning, logical replication, LISTEN/NOTIFY)

• Experience with data visualisation or browser-based graphics (e.g. WebGL, D3, map/canvas rendering)

• Experience creating technical diagrams and drawings using diagram tools

• Understanding of cybersecurity threats, solutions, and best practices

• Knowledge of and experience with ISO 27001 and 9001

• Willingness to travel globally for short periods of time

• Familiarity with multiple languages in addition to English