Senior
Engineer

We are at the most important juncture in human history. AI is advancing at unprecedented speed, and the impact window for people who can harness it effectively is finite. The work we do today will define our contribution for years to come.

Publicus is building the data and intelligence layer for government procurement — helping businesses find and win government contracts, and helping governments save money, prevent fraud, and buy Canadian. Our goal is to take this marketplace global.

This is a senior, hands-on engineering role. You'll own critical systems end to end — the data pipelines, agents, and infrastructure that the entire product and business run on — and you'll set the technical direction for how we build them.

You won't just ship your own work. You'll raise the bar for the whole team: the patterns, the review standards, the “how do we know this works in production?” discipline. When something is hard or ambiguous, it lands on your desk.

“Senior here means ownership and judgment — not distance from the code.”

• Own and scale the data, agent, and infrastructure systems behind the product
• Set technical direction and the standards the team builds against
• Take the hardest, most ambiguous problems from zero to production
• Multiply the team's output with AI-assisted development — and own correctness
• Work directly with the CTO on architecture, product, and what we build next

We're “vibe coding” with standards:

• AI-assisted development is expected — correctness is owned by you
• We ship with evidence: tests, logs, clear validation steps, measurable impact
• If it's not verifiable, it's not done

“The differentiator is no longer ‘can you code?’ — it's can you identify problems, deliver outcomes, verify them, and keep them working in production.”

You see something broken and you fix it. You don't wait for permission or a ticket — and you bring the rest of the team up with you.

• Senior operator: you've owned important systems and made the calls on them
• Evidence-first engineer: you prove what you shipped works, in production
• You use AI tools aggressively, but can debug when the model is wrong
• Ruthlessly prioritize the 80% that provides customer value
• Your value is taste, judgment, and domain expertise — AI is the force multiplier
• You want your work to matter. You're here for the mission.

The toolkit for this role, in terms the public sector will recognise. You won't use all of these every day — but you should be strong across most of them.

• Cloud architecture: designing and operating systems on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud
• Data engineering & integration: building data pipelines, ETL, and APIs that connect systems of record
• AI / machine learning: applied AI and large language model (LLM) development, retrieval, and evaluation
• Full-stack development: TypeScript, React / Next.js, Node.js, Python, and PostgreSQL
• Security & data protection: secure development, access control, and privacy practices (PIPEDA / Protected B awareness, SOC 2)
• DevOps & reliability: CI/CD, containerization (Docker), infrastructure-as-code, monitoring, and testing
• Agile delivery: shipping iteratively with clear validation and measurable outcomes

• 6+ years building and shipping software products, ideally at startups
• A track record of owning systems end to end — you have things you're proud of
• Obsessed with AI and what's possible with it
• Strong opinions about how to build things, loosely held
• Here for the mission · Based in Toronto

Where you land in the band depends on experience and what you bring. Equity is meaningful and discussed early in the process — we're building something real.