Manager, Application Development
About the role
Being part of Air Canada is to become part of an iconic Canadian symbol, recently ranked the best Airline in North America. Let your career take flight by joining our diverse and vibrant team at the leading edge of passenger aviation.
Air Canada is advancing its digital transformation, and backend engineering is a critical enabler of the customer experience. We are seeking a Manager, Application Development, supporting back-end engineering, to lead the teams responsible for building and operating the back-end services that power our digital products.
This role is ideal for a builder who thrives on creating strong engineering teams, establishing modern development practices, and driving operational excellence. You will also act as a coach and strategic partner, helping shape Air Canada’s technology direction while developing the next generation of engineering talent.
Responsibilities:
Leadership & Team Development
- Build and scale high performing backend engineering teams through strong hiring, onboarding, and talent development.
- Coach and mentor the team to support career growth, skill development, and long term retention.
- Foster a culture of ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement across all teams.
Technical Ownership
- Oversee backend services end to end, ensuring they are scalable, secure, and aligned with enterprise architecture.
- Provide oversight on AWS cloud infrastructure, ensuring best practices in reliability, performance, and cost efficiency.
- Ensure seamless integration with customer facing digital products across mobile, web, and partner systems.
Process & Delivery Excellence
- Establish and lead a backend engineering community of practice to standardize patterns, share knowledge, and accelerate delivery.
- Implement modern engineering processes (CI/CD, automated testing, DevOps practices) to improve developer velocity.
- Drive operational excellence through observability, incident management, and continuous improvement.
- Demonstrate punctuality and dependability to support overall team success in a fast-paced environment.
Strategic Collaboration
- Partner with Product, Architecture, and Platform teams to influence long term technology direction.
- Contribute to roadmaps, technical planning, and architectural decisions that support Air Canada’s digital strategy.
High Impact Focus Areas
- Build a high velocity engineering culture through strong processes, tooling, and shared standards.
- Strengthen back-end and cloud foundations to support reliability, scalability, and modernization.
- Develop people and grow internal talent pipelines to build sustainable engineering capability.
- Drive backend architecture and team execution with an AI first approach, integrating LLMs, automation, and intelligent services as core components of the product.
Qualifications
Required
- 5+ years of experience in backend engineering, including cloud native development.
- 3+ years of experience leading engineering teams or managing technical delivery.
- Strong knowledge of AWS services (Lambda, ECS/EKS, API Gateway, DynamoDB, RDS, SQS/SNS, Step Functions).
- Experience with microservices, APIs, event driven architectures, and DevOps practices.
- Demonstrated ability to build teams, coach engineers, and drive operational excellence.
Preferred
- Experience in large scale digital environments or customer facing platforms.
- Familiarity with observability tooling, SLOs, and reliability engineering.
- Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.
Why This Role Matters
Joining Air Canada Digital means contributing to the systems that support millions of customers every day. This role offers the opportunity to shape engineering culture, build foundational capabilities, and influence the future of Air Canada’s digital ecosystem.
Conditions of Employment:
Candidates must be eligible to work in the country of interest at the time any offer of employment is made and are responsible for obtaining any required work permits, visas, or other authorizations necessary for employment. Prior to their start date, candidates will also need to provide proof of their eligibility to work in the country of interest.
Linguistic Requirements
Based on equal qualifications, preference will be given to bilingual candidates.
Diversity and Inclusion
Air Canada is strongly committed to Diversity and Inclusion and aims to create a healthy, accessible and rewarding work environment which highlights employees’ unique contributions to our company’s success.
As an equal opportunity employer, we welcome applications from all to help us build a diverse workforce which reflects the diversity of our customers, and communities, in which we live and serve.
Air Canada thanks all candidates for their interest; however only those selected to continue in the process will be contacted.
About Air Canada
Canada's largest airline, the country’s flag carrier and a founding member of Star Alliance, the world's most comprehensive air transportation network celebrating its 25thanniversary in 2022, Air Canada provides scheduled passenger service directly to 51 airports in Canada, 51 in the United States and 86 internationally. It is the only international network carrier in North America to receive a Four-Star ranking from Skytrax, which in 2021 gave Air Canada awards for the Best Airline Staff in North America, Best Airline Staff in Canada, Best Business Class Lounge in North America, and an excellence award for its management of the COVID-19 pandemic.
**
Air Canada est la plus importante société aérienne du Canada, le transporteur national du pays et un membre cofondateur du réseau Star Alliance — le plus vaste regroupement mondial de sociétés aériennes, qui célèbre son 25e anniversaire en 2022. Les lignes passagers régulières d’Air Canada relient sans escale 51 aéroports au Canada, 51 aux États-Unis et 86 sur le reste du globe. En Amérique du Nord, Air Canada constitue le seul transporteur aérien d’envergure internationale offrant une gamme complète de services à détenir la cote quatre étoiles de Skytrax qui, en 2021, lui a décerné les prix Meilleur personnel au sol et à bord en Amérique du Nord, Meilleur personnel au sol et à bord au Canada, Meilleur salon de classe affaires en Amérique du Nord ainsi qu’un Prix d’excellence pour sa gestion de la pandémie de la COVID-19.
Manager, Application Development
About the role
Being part of Air Canada is to become part of an iconic Canadian symbol, recently ranked the best Airline in North America. Let your career take flight by joining our diverse and vibrant team at the leading edge of passenger aviation.
Air Canada is advancing its digital transformation, and backend engineering is a critical enabler of the customer experience. We are seeking a Manager, Application Development, supporting back-end engineering, to lead the teams responsible for building and operating the back-end services that power our digital products.
This role is ideal for a builder who thrives on creating strong engineering teams, establishing modern development practices, and driving operational excellence. You will also act as a coach and strategic partner, helping shape Air Canada’s technology direction while developing the next generation of engineering talent.
Responsibilities:
Leadership & Team Development
- Build and scale high performing backend engineering teams through strong hiring, onboarding, and talent development.
- Coach and mentor the team to support career growth, skill development, and long term retention.
- Foster a culture of ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement across all teams.
Technical Ownership
- Oversee backend services end to end, ensuring they are scalable, secure, and aligned with enterprise architecture.
- Provide oversight on AWS cloud infrastructure, ensuring best practices in reliability, performance, and cost efficiency.
- Ensure seamless integration with customer facing digital products across mobile, web, and partner systems.
Process & Delivery Excellence
- Establish and lead a backend engineering community of practice to standardize patterns, share knowledge, and accelerate delivery.
- Implement modern engineering processes (CI/CD, automated testing, DevOps practices) to improve developer velocity.
- Drive operational excellence through observability, incident management, and continuous improvement.
- Demonstrate punctuality and dependability to support overall team success in a fast-paced environment.
Strategic Collaboration
- Partner with Product, Architecture, and Platform teams to influence long term technology direction.
- Contribute to roadmaps, technical planning, and architectural decisions that support Air Canada’s digital strategy.
High Impact Focus Areas
- Build a high velocity engineering culture through strong processes, tooling, and shared standards.
- Strengthen back-end and cloud foundations to support reliability, scalability, and modernization.
- Develop people and grow internal talent pipelines to build sustainable engineering capability.
- Drive backend architecture and team execution with an AI first approach, integrating LLMs, automation, and intelligent services as core components of the product.
Qualifications
Required
- 5+ years of experience in backend engineering, including cloud native development.
- 3+ years of experience leading engineering teams or managing technical delivery.
- Strong knowledge of AWS services (Lambda, ECS/EKS, API Gateway, DynamoDB, RDS, SQS/SNS, Step Functions).
- Experience with microservices, APIs, event driven architectures, and DevOps practices.
- Demonstrated ability to build teams, coach engineers, and drive operational excellence.
Preferred
- Experience in large scale digital environments or customer facing platforms.
- Familiarity with observability tooling, SLOs, and reliability engineering.
- Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.
Why This Role Matters
Joining Air Canada Digital means contributing to the systems that support millions of customers every day. This role offers the opportunity to shape engineering culture, build foundational capabilities, and influence the future of Air Canada’s digital ecosystem.
Conditions of Employment:
Candidates must be eligible to work in the country of interest at the time any offer of employment is made and are responsible for obtaining any required work permits, visas, or other authorizations necessary for employment. Prior to their start date, candidates will also need to provide proof of their eligibility to work in the country of interest.
Linguistic Requirements
Based on equal qualifications, preference will be given to bilingual candidates.
Diversity and Inclusion
Air Canada is strongly committed to Diversity and Inclusion and aims to create a healthy, accessible and rewarding work environment which highlights employees’ unique contributions to our company’s success.
As an equal opportunity employer, we welcome applications from all to help us build a diverse workforce which reflects the diversity of our customers, and communities, in which we live and serve.
Air Canada thanks all candidates for their interest; however only those selected to continue in the process will be contacted.
About Air Canada
Canada's largest airline, the country’s flag carrier and a founding member of Star Alliance, the world's most comprehensive air transportation network celebrating its 25thanniversary in 2022, Air Canada provides scheduled passenger service directly to 51 airports in Canada, 51 in the United States and 86 internationally. It is the only international network carrier in North America to receive a Four-Star ranking from Skytrax, which in 2021 gave Air Canada awards for the Best Airline Staff in North America, Best Airline Staff in Canada, Best Business Class Lounge in North America, and an excellence award for its management of the COVID-19 pandemic.
**
Air Canada est la plus importante société aérienne du Canada, le transporteur national du pays et un membre cofondateur du réseau Star Alliance — le plus vaste regroupement mondial de sociétés aériennes, qui célèbre son 25e anniversaire en 2022. Les lignes passagers régulières d’Air Canada relient sans escale 51 aéroports au Canada, 51 aux États-Unis et 86 sur le reste du globe. En Amérique du Nord, Air Canada constitue le seul transporteur aérien d’envergure internationale offrant une gamme complète de services à détenir la cote quatre étoiles de Skytrax qui, en 2021, lui a décerné les prix Meilleur personnel au sol et à bord en Amérique du Nord, Meilleur personnel au sol et à bord au Canada, Meilleur salon de classe affaires en Amérique du Nord ainsi qu’un Prix d’excellence pour sa gestion de la pandémie de la COVID-19.