Engineering Manager in Toronto

Relay is entering an exciting new chapter, and we’re hiring an Engineering Manager, Voyager to help shape how AI powers our next stage of scale. You’ll make high-impact, strategic decisions every day, with direct influence over the technology foundations behind a product used and loved by thousands of small businesses.

Voyager works a step ahead, exploring what’s next for Relay. We build the technology foundations that make AI and insights possible across the product, and we partner with product teams so they can build quickly on top of them. We also act as Relay’s innovation center, running fast, exploratory spikes on emerging technologies to establish what’s viable before the company commits to it.

The work spans both ends of the maturity curve, from hardening infrastructure other teams depend on to prototyping things that may not exist yet. In this role, you’ll decide where the team places its bets, keep the balance between exploration and production, and grow the engineers doing the work.

• AI Infrastructure Ownership: Be accountable for the reliability, security, and lifecycle of Voyager’s shared LLM systems, from design through deployment and monitoring.
• R&D and Proof-of-Concepts: Lead exploratory initiatives that evaluate and validate emerging technologies, producing a clear recommendation on whether and how Relay should adopt them.
• Developer Enablement: Give teams across Relay the tooling, patterns, and guidance they need to ship AI workflows quickly and safely.
• Delivery Leadership: Lead the planning and delivery of Voyager’s platform and R&D initiatives, making sure work meets quality standards, timelines, and business goals. Drive clarity in priorities and execution across the team.
• Team Operations: Establish and refine engineering processes, including sprint planning, code reviews, and technical design reviews, adapted for a team that moves between prototypes and production systems.
• People Management & Development: Build and grow a high-performing, senior-heavy engineering team through hiring, onboarding, coaching, and performance management, creating clear growth paths for senior and staff-level engineers.

Our Tech Stack:

• Front-end: React, Typescript, React Native
• Back-end: Node.js, Typescript, Terraform, AWS (DynamoDB, RDS Postgres, Lambda, S3, SQS, SNS, SES, ElasticSearch, ECS)
• Tools: Cursor, Claude, GitHub, GitHub Actions, Datadog, Jira, Metabase

Benefits:

• Competitive salary and meaningful equity: Relay employees are Relay owners, complete with equity and a competitive salary.
• Social connection: We believe in celebrating our wins with two annual company-wide get-togethers, quarterly team events, happy hours, and special events and networking opportunities with industry leaders.
• Personal and professional growth: Through ongoing feedback, mentorship, and coaching, work with peers and leaders who are invested in your growth and success.
• Parental leave with top-up: We offer 12 weeks off with a 100% salary top-up for all full-time employees, regardless of location, and accessible for all parents: birthing, non-birthing, and adoptive.
• Comprehensive health benefits: Enjoy full health benefits from day one: no probation period required.
• Hybrid work environment: We value meaningful collaboration and connection at our Toronto office three days per week.
• Top-tier equipment: As a Mac-first company, our Toronto offices have everything you need to produce your best work comfortably.
• Flexible vacation and time off: Every team member starts with 15 vacation days and 5 flex days to use as needed.
• Dog-friendly space: Our office is 100% floof-friendly.
• Award-winning workplace: Relay is a recognized innovative and high-growth company.

You have strong judgment about emerging technology and can separate what’s useful from what’s currently loud, then explain that call clearly to leadership. You can run a team that moves between exploration and production, and you know when a rough spike is the right answer and when something needs to be built to last. You’ve managed senior-heavy teams, including senior and staff-level engineers, and know how to lead through influence, give technical leaders room to own big problems, and keep them growing.

You have hands-on experience building agentic systems that run in production, not just prototypes, and understand what it takes to make them reliable, observable, and safe at scale. You’re passionate about building and scaling engineering teams, and deeply invested in growing people to do their best work. You thrive in cross-functional environments, bringing teams together, connecting the dots, and driving initiatives that deliver meaningful impact.

You have a strong technical foundation and a proven track record of shipping high-quality products. You’re technical enough to review designs, challenge architecture decisions, and earn credibility with senior engineers. You build with AI, not just use it: You’re actively embedding AI into how you work, pushing what’s possible, and bringing your team along with you.

You seek out feedback: You see directness as respect, not criticism. You actively seek input, sit with hard truths, and use feedback as fuel for improvement. Small businesses are why we’re here: Relay exists to help them thrive — and that mission has to resonate with you.

You own your work: You take pride in your work, follow through on commitments, and feel a deep sense of responsibility for outcomes, not just tasks. You push relentlessly for reinvention: You’re always asking “how can this be better?” — in your work, in your craft, in yourself.

You’re energized by complexity and ambiguity: You enjoy tackling problems that don’t come with a playbook. You crave autonomy: We trust our team with big challenges and the freedom to solve them. You care about impact, not noise: You care deeply about the substance of your work.

We’re looking for people who are relentless, curious, and care deeply about the work. You’re encouraged to apply even if your experience doesn’t perfectly match the job description — your perspective and drive matter more.