{"id":720999,"url":"https://alion.io/job/shyftlabs-technical-lead","title":"Technical Lead","company":{"id":685982,"name":"Shyftlabs","domain":"shyftlabs.io","url":"https://alion.io/company/shyftlabs","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Lever","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":91,"open_postings":25,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.36,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":39,"computed_at":"2026-10-29T05:49:05Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Toronto, Canada"],"countries":["CA"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":130000,"max":170000,"currency":"CAD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":121059},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":8,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Agile","optional":false},{"name":"Amazon Aurora","optional":false},{"name":"Apache Kafka","optional":false},{"name":"AWS","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"ClickHouse","optional":false},{"name":"GCP","optional":false},{"name":"Go","optional":false},{"name":"Java","optional":false},{"name":"Node JS","optional":false},{"name":"PostgreSQL","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"SLI/SLO/SLA","optional":false},{"name":"Snowflake","optional":false},{"name":"SQL","optional":false},{"name":"JavaScript","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-03-05T18:09:13Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-03-05","last_verified_at":"2026-10-29T13:40:27Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":237,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":237},"description":"About ShyftLabs\nAt ShyftLabs, we live and breathe data. Since 2020, we’ve been helping Fortune 500 companies unlock growth with cutting-edge digital solutions that transform industries and create measurable business impact. We’re growing fast and we’re looking for passionate problem-solvers who are ready to turn big ideas into real outcomes.\nThe Opportunity\nWe’re an ambitious Toronto-based startup building data-driven products that operate at massive scale, and we’re looking for a Technical Lead / Backend Architect to help shape our backend foundation for the next stage of growth. You’ll be hands-on designing distributed systems that handle billions of events monthly, while guiding the engineering team in building scalable, secure, and high-performing services.\nThis is an opportunity to take ownership of architecture decisions, influence technology direction, and work alongside a passionate team that moves fast, experiments boldly, and values craftsmanship.\nWhat You'll Be Doing\n Architect & Deliver: Design and implement distributed backend systems capable of handling billions of monthly events (e.g., AdTech pipelines, CAMS microservices).\nBuild Scalable Data Pipelines: Develop robust ingestion and processing frameworks using Kafka, ClickHouse, and Snowflake, ensuring data quality and schema governance.\nOptimize Performance: Lead database optimization efforts across Aurora, Cloud SQL, and PostgreSQL to deliver low-latency, high-availability systems.\nSet the Bar for Engineering: Define and enforce best practices around code quality, CI/CD automation, monitoring, and release management.\nLead & Mentor: Guide engineers through architectural decisions, conduct design reviews, and balance workload distribution in an Agile setup.\nDrive Cloud Architecture: Design cloud infrastructure on AWS and GCP, with a focus on scalability, cost efficiency, and security compliance.\nCollaborate Cross-Functionally: Partner closely with Product Managers and Data teams to evaluate technical feasibility, define milestones, and deliver on roadmap goals.\nChampion Reliability: Promote observability and reliability engineering practices, building alerting, tracing, and SLO/SLA dashboards for high system visibility.\nWhat You Bring\n8+ years of backend development experience, including 3+ years in a technical leadership or architecture role.\nDeep expertise in distributed systems, event-driven architecture, and data-intensive applications.\nStrong proficiency in at least one backend language (Node.js, Python, Go, or Java).\nHands-on experience with Kafka, ClickHouse, Snowflake, and relational databases.\nProven experience scaling systems on AWS or GCP.\nExceptional communication, mentorship, and problem-solving skills.\nA startup mindset - 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