Senior Software Engineer — Thrive Creative

About the role

Thrive Creative is hiring a Senior Software Engineer who likes variety and wants to lead. You'll set the technical direction for, and mentor, our growing team of intermediate and junior engineers. You'll move between several projects and work streams in a given week, owning work that spans servers, infrastructure and application code.

We're also leaning hard into AI. We want someone who doesn't just use AI tools, but pushes how our team builds with them: faster delivery, better automation, and AI features where they make sense.

Location: On-site at our office in New Horizon Mall, 260300 Writing Creek Cres., Balzac, AB — just north of Calgary, across from CrossIron Mills, about 20 minutes from downtown. In the office most days; some remote work is allowed.

Type: Full-time, permanent

Salary: $80,000 to $110,000 CAD per year, depending on experience and expertise

Non-negotiables

• You live in, or will relocate to, Calgary. This role is not open to remote candidates elsewhere.
• You'll work on-site at our New Horizon Mall office most days; some remote work is allowed.
• You want to lead: guiding, mentoring and raising the bar for intermediate and junior engineers.

What you'll do

• Lead and mentor a growing team of intermediate and junior engineers: set technical direction, run code reviews, and help each person level up.
• Work across several projects at once, keeping each one moving and knowing when to switch focus.
• Build and maintain server-side applications and APIs, mostly in PHP and TypeScript (Node.js).
• Own the infrastructure your code runs on: cloud resources, CI/CD pipelines, containers, monitoring and deployments.
• Drive AI adoption on the team: introduce AI coding tools and agents into our workflow, build internal automations, and ship AI-powered features using LLM APIs.
• Debug production issues end to end, from application code down to servers, networking and databases.
• Break down loosely defined requests into clear tasks, estimates and trade-offs, and delegate them well.
• Communicate status, risks and blockers clearly across multiple stakeholders.

What you bring

• 6–8 years of professional software development experience.
• Experience leading or mentoring other engineers, formally or informally: you've been the person others come to.
• Strong server-side background: building APIs, background jobs and data-driven applications.
• Working knowledge of PHP and TypeScript, or deep experience in a similar server-side language and the willingness to pick these up quickly.
• Hands-on infrastructure experience: Linux servers, a major cloud provider (AWS, GCP or Azure), Docker, CI/CD and basic networking.
• Solid relational database skills (e.g. MySQL or PostgreSQL), including schema design and query tuning.
• Daily, practical use of AI tools in your work, with real examples of how they changed the way you or your team builds software.
• A track record of juggling multiple projects or work streams without dropping things.
• Clear written and verbal communication; comfortable working with ambiguity.

Nice to have

• Experience with Laravel, Symfony or another modern PHP framework.
• Experience with Node.js frameworks such as NestJS, Express or Fastify.
• Infrastructure as code (Terraform).
• Built a feature on top of an LLM API, or an agent or tool that automates engineering work.
• Experience modernizing or maintaining a legacy codebase.
• Worked at an agency, consultancy or small team where you wore many hats.

You'll thrive here if you

• Get energized by variety rather than drained by it.
• Would rather ship something useful this week than perfect something next quarter.
• Are curious about where AI is taking software development and want to help shape it.
• Take ownership without waiting to be asked.

What we offer

• Your own dedicated mini PC to work on at the office. We're a bring-your-own-laptop environment for everything else.
• No downtown commute
• Flexible work schedule

How to apply

Send your resume and a short note to [email protected]. In your note, tell us about one way you've used AI to change how you work. A few sentences is plenty.