Staff Software Engineer

Urban Sky•Quinte West, ON

2d•Onsite

About The Position

Urban Sky is seeking a Staff Software Engineer to take ownership in a fast-moving environment. This role involves designing, building, deploying, and operating the software for Urban Sky's manufacturing operation, which includes a full-stack MRP system for tracking inventory, work orders, bills of materials, quality holds, and serialized parts. The software is the operational backbone of the company's balloon manufacturing process. The engineer will work directly with end-users such as manufacturing technicians, logistics coordinators, quality inspectors, and finance, translating physical processes into software. The interfaces are designed for operators, focusing on usability for shop-floor tasks like scanning barcodes and following multi-step procedures. The role operates within an aerospace-regulated environment (AS9100), requiring audit trails and end-to-end traceability for serialized parts. Prior MRP or manufacturing experience is not required, but an excitement for learning a complex business domain is. The position is ideal for individuals who enjoy small teams and solving ambiguous problems.

Requirements

8+ years of professional software engineering experience
Strong fundamentals in system design, data structures, and architecture
Experience building and operating backend systems at scale
Solid instincts for data modeling, schema design, and SQL
Comfort with cloud infrastructure and modern DevOps practices
Experience owning production systems in environments that evolve quickly
Strong communication skills and the ability to collaborate as priorities shift
Ability to review, restructure, reject, or rewrite AI output until it's correct, readable, and operable

Nice To Haves

TypeScript and modern web development
Designing clean APIs and well-structured monoliths
Thinking carefully about data models, schemas, and migrations
Infrastructure, reliability, and operational excellence
Mentoring others and raising the bar for the team
Learning quickly and adjusting course as new information emerges
Experience with technologies such as: TypeScript / JavaScript, React, Vite, Mantine UI, tRPC for API contracts, PostgreSQL (raw SQL and migrations, not just an ORM), ClickHouse for analytics, Playwright for end-to-end testing, AWS, Terraform, Docker, CI/CD pipelines

Responsibilities

Set up your environment and start committing code within your first day or two
Learn existing systems by improving them, not by watching from the sidelines
Fix bugs, tighten rough edges, and ship small enhancements to production
Participate in deployments, debugging, and operational workflows
Use AI tools from the start to understand the codebase and accelerate contributions
Ask questions, propose improvements, and engage in technical decisions
Own meaningful areas of our stack across backend, frontend, and infrastructure
Lead design and implementation of projects that may span quarters
Make architectural decisions with an eye toward reliability, operability, and future change
Work directly with operators and stakeholders—often non-engineers—to refine solutions
Drive systems from concept → implementation → production → iteration → support
Continuously simplify, improve, and evolve what you own
Help the team move faster by raising technical quality and reducing friction
Own systems end-to-end, from design through production and long-term maintenance—even as those systems evolve
Design for operations, not just implementation
Favor simple, adaptable systems
Own the full lifecycle
Build reliability through feedback
Use abstraction sparingly and intentionally
Scale and evolve based on evidence
Leverage AI with engineering judgment
Embrace iteration as the default
Use AI tools daily for implementation, debugging, refactoring, and exploration
Adapt quickly as tools, models, and workflows evolve
Apply strong judgment to AI-generated code—you're accountable for what ships, not the model
Use AI to build production systems, not just prototypes
Treat AI as leverage, not a replacement for understanding