Position title: 1757 - Lead Software Engineer - Squad Tech Lead
Site/Location: Hybrid. Primarily remote with on‑site presence once per quarter. Occasional travel between Toronto and Waterloo may be required depending on project needs, typically aligned to quarterly work assignments.
Location: 1 York Toronto, Ontario
Client: SunLife
Contract Duration: 12 months
Target Start Date: ASAP to 9/21/27
Work Hours: Monday–Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Periodic weekend or after‑hours work may be required to support project implementations and system upgrades.
Frequency of Weekend/After‑Hours Work: Approximately monthly, depending on the deployment cycle. These are typically short, half‑hour deployments requiring only a few hours of support. Some deployments occur on Sundays, so frequency may vary month to month.
Non‑Negotiables (Must‑Haves)
- Java backend development (core requirement).
- Strong communication skills (must be able to interface with architects, PO, business stakeholders, and developers).
- Experience leading developers (people leadership + delivery leadership).
Lead Software Engineer - Squad Tech Lead
Our teams are dedicated to supporting, enhancing and discovering new ways to help our clients achieve lifetime financial security, live healthier lives and connect with us. Through innovation and collaboration, we're striving to deliver best-in-class technology solutions for our digital clients.
We are currently seeking a Squad Tech Lead to provide technical design, development, support and analysis for large-scale applications and systems in a new agile team within the Canadian IT Platforms and Engineering team. This permanent role combines hands-on technical work with leadership responsibilities. The successful candidate is a team player with excellent technical and problem-solving skills, is aware of industry trends, questions the status quo and can identify and propose alternatives. Come join us as we continue to intensify the focus on our digital journey, building APIs and improving our client experience.
What will you do?
- Collaborate with skilled Agile team members to understand user needs and design, develop and deliver high quality web applications that meet those needs
- Configure and design applications and workflows, using outside the box thinking, to create innovative ways to advance our client first strategy
- Lead AI-assisted development practices, leveraging GitHub Copilot and other AI coding tools to accelerate development velocity and improve code quality
- Design, develop, and integrate AI agents and conversational interfaces to enhance application capabilities and deliver intelligent automation solutions
- Champion secure coding practices and lead efforts to identify, prioritize, and remediate application security vulnerabilities using SAST/DAST tools
- Conduct security code reviews and ensure compliance with security standards and best practices throughout the development lifecycle
- Coach, mentor and collaborate with members of the design and development team
- Provide technical direction and guidance to projects, ensuring risks are mitigated and projects are implemented successfully
- Establish coding standards and technical best practices across the squad
- Conduct code reviews and mentor team members on technical excellence
- Support developers in removing technical blockers and guide technical implementation of user stories and features
- Communicate technical risks, dependencies, and constraints to stakeholders
- Participate in planning and refinement sessions with technical perspective and collaborate with Product Owner on technical feasibility and estimates
- Drive quality standards and testing practices; identify technical debt and propose solutions
- Monitor system performance and reliability and champion continuous improvement initiatives
- Contribute to defining timelines and plans; analyze and estimate feasibility, cost, time and scope
- Ensure coding, testing, debugging, and implementation activities are completed as required
- Participate in agile ceremonies and support on-call and incident response when needed
- Represent the squad's technical interests in cross-squad discussions and collaborate with other Tech Leads across squads for consistency
Critical Skills / Must-Haves:
1.Core Technical
- Expert Java + Spring Boot (complex microservices, high‑scale APIs, performance tuning)
- Strong experience with REST APIs
- Solid understanding of web applications & server technologies
- Ability to learn internal frameworks quickly
2. Leadership & Communication
- 70% leadership / 30% hands‑on
- Proven experience leading and mentoring developers
- Strong communication skills for working with architects, PSCs, product owners, and business stakeholders
- Experience leading mixed‑level teams (junior + intermediate)
3. Security
- Ability to address code‑level vulnerabilities
- Experience using SAST/DAST tools (Snyk, Checkmarx, SonarQube, Veracode)
- Understanding of secure SDLC and basic threat modeling
4. DevOps & Testing
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines (BitBucket, Jenkins, CDD)
- Strong unit testing experience (JUnit, Mockito, RESTAssured)
5. AI (Adjusted Depth)
- Beginner–intermediate experience with GitHub Copilot or similar LLMs
- Ability to use AI for assisted development, code generation, and productivity
Individual skills
- Customer obsession – customers are at the centre of all we do
- A penchant for creating re-usable components and identifying opportunities for re-use
- Innovation mindset with enthusiasm for exploring and implementing AI technologies to solve business problems
- Security-first mindset with commitment to building secure, resilient applications
- Ability to evaluate AI solutions for ethical considerations, bias, privacy, and responsible AI practices
- Flexible and adaptable with the ability to align to changing priorities and technologies
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills
- Strong technical expertise with ability to establish and drive quality standards
- Collaborative approach to working with Product Owners, Scrum Masters, and cross-functional teams
- Ability and desire to lead with excellent communication skills
Nice-to-Haves:
1.Front‑End
- Understanding of React or Angular
- Awareness of Web Accessibility (A11y)
2. Cloud & Platform
- Basic Kubernetes experience (pod tuning, configuration)
- Docker/containerization
3. Messaging & Integration
- Kafka
- SOAP/XML
4. Domain
- Financial services or insurance experience
- Experience with retirement products, savings, or client‑experience journeys
5. AI (Bonus)
- Experience with Claude, agent orchestration platforms, or conversational interfaces