Staff engineer

About the Role

Vantage is hiring a Staff Engineer. You help set technical strategy across teams and deliver it through direct implementation, broad technical leadership, or both.

As a Staff Engineer, you drive the technical roadmap multiple teams build against, and you're accountable for it landing. You influence peers and senior leadership to get behind it. You clear cross-team dependencies before integration points turn into delays or crunch, and you build the frameworks and processes teams use to stay aligned without needing you in the room.

You stay hands-on, leading several significant initiatives in parallel. Your depth spans the whole stack, frontend through data, and you use that breadth to define SLAs and observability standards. You own technical debt management and give technical direction that balances what we need to ship this quarter against what we need to still be true in three years.

You raise the bar of the whole engineering team through mentorship, design review, and pairing.

Minimum Requirements

• 9+ years of professional experience with a strong record in software development, testing, software design, and architecture.
• Very deep knowledge of a full production stack: frontend, backend, infrastructure, and data. You can explain how a choice in one layer shows up as a problem in another, and you design accordingly.
• Track record of owning a multi-quarter technical roadmap that spanned more than one team, including securing buy-in from engineering peers and senior leadership and driving it to completion.
• Experience managing technical debt as an explicit program of work: quantifying it, prioritizing it, making the business and developer-experience case to leadership, and landing it in a roadmap alongside product commitments.
• Experience designing and operating B2B API integrations: authentication, rate limiting, retries, idempotency, versioning, and contract evolution.
• Track record of mentoring senior engineers, not just junior ones, including through architectural thinking and not only code review.
• Experience with CI tooling, Docker, and cloud platforms such as Azure, AWS, or GCP.
• Experience evaluating and rolling out developer tooling, including AI-assisted development tools, with a clear view of where they earn their keep and where they introduce risk to code quality, review discipline, or data handling.
• Deep Python and Django experience building production services.
• A degree in Computer Science or a related field.

Role Responsibilities

• Lead the design and implementation of multiple significant technical initiatives in parallel, staying hands-on in the code and the architecture.
• Provide technical direction that balances short-term delivery against long-term sustainability, and make sure architectural decisions across teams remain consistent over time.
• Own technical debt management. Surface the debt that matters, build the case for it in business and developer-experience terms, take it to leadership, and work with Product to get it prioritized in quarterly goals.
• Use forums such as Architecture Office Hours, Lunch and Learns, internal talks, and the wiki to spread context, enforce industry best practices, and keep teams aligned to the technical roadmap.
• Mentor engineers across the department, including senior engineers, in partnership with their managers. Create growth opportunities for others rather than absorbing the interesting work yourself.
• Act as a quality gatekeeper through active code review and testing strategy, and deliberately enable other engineers to become effective reviewers and gatekeepers themselves.

About Vantage

Vantage is the first unified platform purpose-built for retail media orchestration, empowering enterprise retailers to seamlessly activate onsite, offsite, and in-store advertising. With a global presence in North America and Asia-Pacific, Vantage enables retailers to launch and grow their media networks through scalable technology and automated workflows, and is trusted by leading retailers like The Home Depot to power their retail media programs.

For a closer look at what we do, our culture, and our benefits, check out our about us and careers pages.

Remote-First, Based in Toronto

Vantage is proudly headquartered in Toronto, but we’re a remote-first team spread across North America (and beyond). Our flexible work philosophy means team members can thrive from wherever they do their best work—whether that’s from a home office, a local café, or while adding stamps to their passport. With a remote-friendly setup, home office support, and annual company retreats, we stay connected, collaborative, and energized—no matter the time zone.

Vantage’s Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Vantage Analytics is fueled by the diversity of our talented employees. We are an equal opportunity employer and embrace ALL individuals and what makes them unique. We believe our employees should be happy and healthy, with peace of mind and a sense of fulfillment. We encourage all individuals to apply for positions that fit their passions.

We promote equality and strive to provide all current and prospective employees with support and opportunities. Reasonable accommodations are available to job applicants on request and throughout the application process.

How Vantage Uses AI in the Recruitment Process

At Vantage, we use AI-enabled tools to support our hiring process. This may include using AI to help organize, screen, and assess applications. We are committed to using these tools responsibly, and ensuring every candidate is treated fairly throughout the process.

All hiring decisions at Vantage are made by our team. Who we invite to work at Vantage is a decision we only trust ourselves to make.

What's Next?

We thank all applicants in advance for their interest in this position, however, only those selected for an interview will be contacted.

As part of the final stages of our hiring process, all candidates will be required to successfully complete a criminal background check.