Software Development Manager

EDealer is a website and software supplier for the Automotive Industry. Our mission is simple: To ensure car dealers build great business and manage inventory. Steadfast in our commitment to create exceptional learning experiences for our clients, we are a passionate group of integrity-powered leaders who love to learn, grow and make a difference. Today we are focused on Merchandising Automation and Vehicle Optimization. Consistent with our long-term goals, our objective is to reduce the time required by dealers to reach the maximum number of customers with consistent accurate, merchandised inventory.

We are looking for a hands-on Software Development Manager to lead one of our engineering teams within EDealer, reporting to the Sr. Director of Product and Engineering. This is a role for an engineer who leads, not a manager who used to build. You will lead a team of seven to eight experienced engineers who already own their systems and their delivery, and over time you should expect roughly half your role to remain focused on direct engineering contribution: writing and reviewing production code, prototyping designs, and improving the platform. The engineers you lead should see you as a peer whose code they review, and vice versa.

This role exists because the team is senior and self-directed enough not to need a full-time coordinator, and because we would rather its manager stay close to the work than drift away from it. It is deliberately inward-facing. It does not carry product ownership, executive and stakeholder reporting, or broader organizational planning, and cross-team work happens engineer to engineer rather than being routed through managers. Technical direction for the area is set by our senior individual contributors in partnership with the Sr. Director; carrying it is not your job. Your attention belongs on your team and the systems they own.

The second constraint is that your engineering time sits off the critical path. The team owns dated customer commitments, and you are not the critical-path owner of them, so no deliverable is waiting on a manager's calendar. The split will not be even in any given week, since a hiring push or an incident will pull it down and quieter weeks will push it past half. What matters is the sustained shape of the role. We protect that in practice, not just on paper, and if the balance starts slipping we treat it as a problem to solve rather than something you absorb quietly.

We offer a competitive salary ($160,000.00 - $180,000.00); a competitive bonus plan; paid time off; participation in our benefits, RRSP matching, and life insurance programs; continuous learning; an amazing culture; and so much more!

Schedule: Monday - Friday

What You Will Do:

Hands-on engineering, approximately half your time:

• Ship production code yourself, taking on meaningful user-facing and platform work and putting your own pull requests through the same review your engineers' work gets.

• Review pull requests with depth and speed, setting the standard for what good review looks like on your team.

• Own technical debt across your area, including refactors, dependency upgrades, test coverage, and structural cleanup that is easy to defer but compounds when ignored.

• Improve the platform underneath your team, including build times, CI, observability, local development experience, and internal tooling.

• Contribute to design and technical planning for upcoming work, writing the prototype yourself when an approach needs proving before the team commits to it.

• Turn what incidents expose into permanent fixes once the immediate issue is resolved, so the same failure does not recur.

Team leadership, approximately half your time:

• Coach and grow your engineers through regular one-on-ones, direct feedback, and deliberate career development, knowing each person's strengths well enough to put them on the work that will stretch them.

• Own performance directly, setting clear expectations, recognising strong work, and addressing underperformance early and honestly rather than letting it drift.

• Assign and sequence work across the team, balancing delivery needs against growth opportunities, and making sure nobody is stuck or quietly blocked.

• Hire, onboard, and build an effective engineering team across the technologies in your area.

• Partner with Product Managers on scoping, prioritization, sequencing, and realistic delivery commitments.

• Develop and maintain engineering best practices, code review standards, and technical culture.

• Own production support, on-call health, and incident follow-through for your area.

• Leverage AI-driven development practices across your team, establishing where these tools genuinely accelerate delivery and where they introduce risk.

What You Will Need:

• You are currently writing production code and want to keep doing so. This is a requirement of the role, not a preference. You should be able to independently design, implement, review, and operate production systems today, not from memory of a previous job.

• Demonstrated people-management experience, with real ownership of performance management, career development, and hiring. We care more about what you have actually done as a manager than about how many years you have held the title. Experience leading a team of six or more engineers is an asset.

• 5+ years of professional software development experience building and operating complex, production backend systems.

• Deep and current experience with Java and Spring Boot, and strong SQL skills. This is where your own contribution will land, so it is a hard requirement rather than a preference.

• Solid grasp of application architecture and design patterns, and the judgment to weigh the tradeoffs between them.

• Excellent pull request review skills and genuine attention to detail.

• The ability to structure your own week, protecting focus time, delegating rather than absorbing, and not letting the management half quietly expand to fill everything.

• The judgment to know when not to pick up the work yourself. A hands-on manager can easily become the team's hero engineer; we are looking for someone who builds ownership in others rather than concentrating it in themselves.

• Experience leading iterative software delivery in close partnership with Product.

• Hands-on experience with AI-driven development practices, including tools like Claude Code, Cursor, or similar, with a considered point of view on where they help and where they do not.

• Excellent communication skills with the ability to adapt to technical and non-technical audiences.

• Critical thinking, autonomy, and sound judgment in ambiguous situations.

Nice to Have:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.

• Experience with the rest of our stack: MySQL, GraphQL, Elasticsearch, AWS, JavaScript/TypeScript/React, Git, and Maven. We do not expect depth in all of them.

• Mobile development experience (Kotlin, iOS, React Native, or similar).

• Prior experience with dealer-facing SaaS, automotive retail software, or other multi-tenant platforms operating at scale.

• Experience working with remote or distributed teams.

What We Offer:

• Competitive pay

• Medical, Dental & Vision

• 401k/RSP programs

• Company paid Group Life/AD&D insurance

• Paid time off

• Flexible working environment

• Continuous Learning

• And an amazing culture to top it all off!

At E INC, in the spirit of pay transparency, we are excited to share our base pay as it is one part of our total compensation package and is determined within a range. The base pay range for this full-time position is $160,000.00 - $180,000.00, and this role may be eligible for discretionary bonuses or commission payments. Your base pay will depend on your skills, qualifications, experience, and location. In addition, our ranges are determined by role, level, and location.

E INC is committed to providing employment accommodation in accordance with the Ontario Human Rights Code and the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. If contacted for an employment opportunity, please advise Human Resources if you require accommodation.

E INC is an equal opportunity employer and affirmatively seeks diversity in its workforce. E INC recruits qualified applicants and advances in employment its employees without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, disability, genetic information, ethnic or national origin, marital status, veteran status, or any other categories protected by law.

E INC takes cybersecurity seriously. E INC will only reach out to candidates via our Application Tracking System ADP, LinkedIn, and Indeed, through company accounts. E INC does not require bank information, date of birth, social identification information, or upfront fees as part of our application process.

As part of our recruitment and hiring process, E INC may use automated tools including artificial intelligence (AI) to support the screening and evaluation of applicants. AI tools support human decision-making and do not replace individualized review by our hiring team. E INC is committed to using these technologies responsibly and in compliance with applicable laws and regulations, and we regularly assess our processes to promote fairness, objectivity, and data protection.

Vacancy status: current vacancy

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