TechLead, Software Development

Job description

## The Company Univeris, headquartered in Toronto, Canada, is a privately held company and leader in enterprise wealth management for the Canadian market. Founded in 1991, Univeris serves over 25,000 financial advisors and 1.5 million investors across 12 countries, with over $450B in Assets Under Administration. We offer the most comprehensive wealth management solution for financial advisors in the credit union, banking, insurance and investment dealer sectors. Technology innovation is a cornerstone of our product development strategy, and through our Evergreen approach, new features and capabilities transparently integrate into the platform. At Univeris, when we are faced with new problems we work together to find solutions, we do what we say, and we are lifelong students. ## The Opportunity We are hiring for two distinct Tech Lead positions. Please read both role descriptions below and indicate your preference, if any, when applying. At Univeris, a Software Development Technical Team Lead is a **hands-on senior software engineer and people manager**, accountable for the technical design, development, quality of deliverables, and the growth and coaching of the developers on their team. Tech Leads are collaborative by nature and lead by example, understanding that solving problems and finding solutions are always more effective when done as a collective. We are currently hiring for **2 senior Tech Lead roles** spanning our R&D, and Professional Services development teams -- each distinct in focus, but unified in the standard of excellence we expect. 1. The **R&D Tech Lead** shapes the future of the Univeris platform. This means leading the design and delivery of new product capabilities and enhancements, owning the specification and technical design process end-to-end, navigating the full product lifecycle with confidence, and partnering closely with Product Owners and Product Management to negotiate roadmap scope and priorities. This role demands strong ownership, the ability to meet tight deadlines, and turning complex product requirements into well-architected, executable plans. 2. The **Professional Services Tech Lead** is the bridge between client needs, product excellence, and technical delivery. This means leading the fulfillment of client service and development requests, partnering with clients and internal stakeholders to navigate proposals and requirements, and ensuring delivered solutions align with Univeris platform standards and architecture. This role requires strong specification and design skills, clear and confident communication, and a thorough understanding of the product lifecycle from request to delivery. Across all the roles, Tech Leads are expected to embrace an AI-first engineering mindset -- actively applying AI tools and practices to accelerate development, improve quality, and continuously raise the bar for what their teams can deliver. ### The Roles Tech Leads at Univeris are senior engineers and people managers who are equally accountable for the technical quality of their team's output and the professional growth of every developer on their team. The following responsibilities apply across all roles: ### People Leadership - Lead, coach, and mentor developers through regular 1:1s, constructive feedback, and hands-on technical guidance - Own performance evaluations and career development planning for direct reports - Drive hiring and onboarding, ensuring new team members ramp effectively and integrate into the team's culture and standards - Foster a high-trust, high-accountability team environment where engineers are empowered to do their best work ### Technical Leadership - Lead by example as a practicing engineer -- actively contributing to design, code, and review alongside the team - Conduct thorough design and code reviews, ensuring adherence to Univeris development standards and architectural principles - Continuously collaborate with other Tech Leads, Development Managers, and Architecture on cross-cutting decisions - Identify and drive opportunities to improve performance, stability, extensibility, and reusability - Contribute to and enforce development standards and best practices across the team ### AI-First Engineering We expect our Tech Leads to embed AI natively across every phase of the SDLC, and not use it as a shortcut, but as a multiplier. This means incorporating AI agents to automate and augment repeatable lifecycle phases, leveraging AI tooling for analysis, code review, development, test case generation, and documentation. It's important also to preserve the discipline and integrity of our established SDLC gates and quality controls. Ultimately, you don't just use AI tools; you know where and when to apply them, you coach your team to do the same, and you continuously raise the bar on how AI makes your team faster, more reliable, and higher quality. ### Delivery - Provide clear, consistent visibility into team health, progress, and risks at all times - Hold the team accountable to delivery commitments while proactively surfacing and resolving blockers - Partner with the stakeholders and partners to maintain a healthy, well-groomed backlog - Drive continuous improvement in team productivity, quality, and velocity ## Role Specifics ### R&D Tech Lead - Own the full specification and technical design process for new features and product enhancements, from concept through to implementation - Navigate the product lifecycle end-to-end, coordinating effectively across engineering, product, and architecture - Negotiate roadmap scope and priorities with Product Owners and Product Management, advocating for technical feasibility and quality - Ensure the team's delivery cadence supports the broader R&D pipeline and release commitments ### Professional Services Tech Lead - Lead technical initiatives related to client service and development requests - Navigate proposals and requirements with clients and internal stakeholders, ensuring we are delivering to what our clients need, translating business needs into technically sound delivery plans - Set and manage delivery expectations clearly throughout the engagement lifecycle - Ensure all delivered solutions align with Univeris platform architecture, standards, and long-term product direction ### The Successful Candidate ### Basic Qualifications - **Education:**Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science / related field or equivalent experience - **Software Development experience:**8+ years - **Development experience with:** 5+ years - **Team Lead experience:**2+ years - **Cloud-native / API-centric apps:**5+ years - **OOP:**Strong working experience - **Communication:** Strong verbal, written, and presentation skills across all stakeholder levels ### Proven Qualifications (Technical) - **Primary Stack:**Java, SQL Server, Vue.js, Angular, JSF - **Cloud-centric solutions:** RESTful APIs, microservices, containers, Kubernetes, Terraform, Spring Boot, Event-Driven architecture, Spring Cloud Data Flow, Data Pipelines (Airbyte, Dagster, dbt, and BigQuery) - **Quality/testing:** JUnit, Mockito, Spring TestContext - **ORMs:** JPA, Hibernate, MyBatis - **Data:** SQL Server, stored procedures, stored functions, database profiling and tuning - **Security:** Techniques and standards for remediation and mitigation of application vulnerabilities ### Bonus Qualifications - Fluent in Spanish and English - Background in financial services / wealth management - Experience migrating monolith to microservice/cloud-centric architecture - .NET (C#) & Angular experience