Lead software engineer Jobs in Kitchener, ON

The Role

This position will play a key role in advancing our AI journey by driving modernization and efficiency across the delivery lifecycle. This role is focused on helping engineering teams apply AI in practical, measurable ways to improve delivery speed, enhance quality, and reduce operational overhead across development and operational workflows.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role that bridges strategy and execution. You will partner closely with engineering, architecture, security, and delivery teams to design, prove, implement, and scale AI-enabled capabilities that strengthen software delivery outcomes. While the primary focus is on advancing software engineering practices and AI-assisted development, the role will also support broader AI adoption across the organization where it aligns to delivery and operational impact.

The successful candidate combines deep software engineering expertise, hands-on experience applying AI technologies to real-world engineering challenges, strong delivery discipline, and practical change leadership. You will help teams adopt AI responsibly by developing reusable playbooks, implementation patterns, and guardrails, along with validation approaches and human-in-the-loop workflows to ensure AI-enabled solutions are secure, compliant, high-quality, and maintainable, aligned with MCAP’s vision, mission, objectives, and values.

Strategy and Planning

• Participates and provides input in the creation of 1 to 3 year IT strategic plans (Enterprise and
• Business Unit specific)
• Ensures applications meets business unit expectations
• Facilitates and monitors the Application Architectural Decisions - 1 to 5 years
• Fosters strong working relationships within the various internal IT teams and Business unit teams to understand future direction of initiatives.
• Partners with the Line of Business in order to deliver Business Systems Applications that meet current and future business needs
• Accountable for full life cycle of IT delivery for the Business Unit projects
• Responsible for timely, on budget delivery of IT components of projects (major and tactical) as per the priorities set by the LOB and/or Resource Allocation Committee
• Liaise with Architecture and Infrastructure teams to deploy and maintain solutions
• Manages business units requests, that are approved and prioritized projects

Acquisition and Deployment

• Direct research on emerging application development software products, languages, and standards in support of procurement and development efforts, including LLMs, agent frameworks, coding agents, and developer copilots.
• Lead the evaluation and selection of AI development tools and platforms, including build-versus-buy decisions, model evaluation, and partnerships with external AI providers.
• Performs detailed technical design of proposed solutions.
• Evaluates relevant risks and determines mitigation strategies.
• Identify requirements and manage the procurement process and vendor selection for new technologies.

Operational Management

• Champion the company’s Vision, Mission and Values as set out in the Strategic Plan both internally and externally within the industry.
• Recruit and develop the right people that believe in and reflect in their behavior MCAP’s Values and culture.
• Establish, monitor and communicate performance standards to direct reports reinforcing individual results, work quality, continuous improvement, teamwork and achievement of MCAP’s objectives.
• Educate, coach and counsel staff to ensure they are empowered to effectively handle their roles in a confident and professional manner.
• Establish and maintain an effective system of communication throughout the business unit.
• Ensure a continuous improvement culture is established and encouraged.
• Assist in the definition of Corporate Guiding Principles, Architectural Standards and Design and the approved Solution Delivery Toolkit, incorporating AI-assisted development standards and patterns.
• Assist with the strategic advancement of IT Methodologies
• Assist with the selection of MCAP’s Solution Delivery Toolkit
• Determine, define and support the metrics and measures required to ensure the success of MCAP IT overall
• Work with LOB management to set and manage the Information Technology budget for the Business Unit
• Ensure compliance with standards, procedures and methodologies and work with auditors to assess same
• Capture, track and report IT Measures and Metrics
• Work with Project Budgets and System Budgets
• Signing Authority (based on authority matrix)

What You Bring To The Team

• 10+ years of IT experience, including 5+ years in an IT leadership role.
• Experience building or integrating coding agents, developer copilots, workflow automation agents, or AI-enabled engineering tools.
• Familiarity with LLMs, AI infrastructure, prompt engineering, agent frameworks, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, model evaluation, and AI governance practices.
• Strong hands-on engineering background with modern application development, APIs, cloud-native patterns, CI/CD, automated testing, secure coding, and production support.
• Experience defining and measuring developer-productivity or AI-adoption outcomes, with the judgment to handle the nuance of measuring engineering impact.
• Strong understanding of secure software development, vulnerability detection, secrets management, data protection, and compliance considerations.
• Demonstrated hands-on experience leading teams while actively contributing to solutions built with TypeScript, JavaScript, , and/or .NET.
• Ability to balance risk, cost, and benefit
• Ability to work in a fast paced environment with a high degree of change and competing priorities
• Strong oral, written and presentation skills
• Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to interface with all levels within the organization.
• Strong problem-solving and conflict resolution skills
• Excellent planning and project management skills
• Demonstrated leadership experience mentoring and coaching others
• Ability to multi-task and prioritize tasks across multiple projects
• Excellent attention to detail and results oriented
• Working knowledge of cloud-native development practices and design patterns using private or public cloud providers
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.