Lab Leader – IA agentique

SIA Innovations INC•Montreal, QC

3d•Onsite

About The Position

The Lab Leader is responsible for the LAB division of SIA and its internal products: Agile+, MIRE, and Common Sense. The mandate includes evolving these tools to create real value for teams and clients, ensuring the quality of delivery for all LAB development activities, and promoting LAB services to the market and IBM. This is a cross-functional role, not tied to any specific studio, with influence across all SIA delivery teams.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related discipline.
6 to 10 years of experience in enterprise application development.
Hands-on experience in several of the following areas: containers/clusters (Red Hat OpenShift, Docker, Kubernetes), CI/CD (Jenkins, Bamboo, UrbanCode, Buddy), monitoring (ELK, Logdna, Prometheus), development (NodeJS, Java, React), databases (CloudantDB, MongoDB, DB2, MySQL).
Experience in product or backlog management (e.g., ClickUp) and with Agile methodologies.
Full professional bilingualism in French and English, both spoken and written.
Excellent communication skills, ability to simplify technical issues for diverse audiences.
Rigor, organization, and management of multiple simultaneous priorities.
Integrity: say what you think and do what you say.
Leadership by example and technical credibility, not by title.
Collaborative spirit and ability to build relationships across teams.
Systems thinking: understand how technical and organizational components influence each other.
Structured problem-solving for ambiguous issues.
Agile learner, capable of quickly absorbing new tools and contexts.
100% on-site presence, 5 days a week.
Proactively communicate with internal teams and external stakeholders.
Prioritize work and career.
When working at a client's site, adapt as much as possible to their working hours and dress code.
Continuously invest in personal development (requiring time outside usual working hours for staying updated, learning, networking, participating in team-building activities, client/partner events, and other social activities).
Be prepared to accept irregular hours and schedules, and occasional travel (with overnight stays) to meet client expectations and deadlines.
Ensure personal agility to handle unforeseen needs; this involves owning outcomes, not just output.
Be 'on call' and available (reachable) in case of client or project emergencies (even during vacation!).
Plan vacations and leave (maximum 2 consecutive weeks) during summer and winter slowdown periods and outside blackout periods.

Nice To Haves

Experience on AI or automation projects is an asset.

Responsibilities

Define and evolve the product vision for Agile+, Mire, and Common Sense.
Identify opportunities for continuous improvement in development processes and tools.
Build and maintain a library of reusable components and best practices for the LAB.
Contribute to internal R&D initiatives and SIA's intellectual property.
Ensure that quality standards defined for the LAB are concretely reflected in client deliverables.
Translate studio and client needs into clear priorities for the internal product roadmap.
Document and communicate LAB quality standards and development processes.
Support development teams across all studios without direct hierarchical link, through coaching and example.
Coach and support the development team in the evolution of the LAB and SDLC, moving from 'doing' to 'thinking', particularly through the adoption of agentic AI tools like IBM Bob.
Actively contribute to business development: demos, proposals, and RFPs highlighting internal products, as well as promoting SIA online and in person.
Assist in the integration of new developers into LAB tools and practices.
Lead internal sessions ('Cool Stuff to Know') on LAB products and best practices.
Maintain continuous monitoring of relevant tools, methodologies, and technologies for the LAB.
Contribute to sustainable, robust, and well-documented solutions.
Take full ownership of LAB results, with autonomy over product and quality decisions.
Manage the complete lifecycle of internal products: prioritization, delivery, adoption, continuous improvement.
Support studio teams in achieving their quality objectives without substituting for them.