Original job description
B.C. GENERAL EMPLOYEES’ UNION
Job Title: Development Technical Lead
Job ID: P0325
Location: 4911 Canada Way, Burnaby, BC V5G 3W3
Build Software That Supports 95,000 BCGEU Members
Lead the technical direction of software that directly and indirectly supports more than 95,000 BCGEU members across British Columbia – in healthcare, social services, education, and beyond. If that matters to you, keep reading.
This role is suited for a hands-on technical leader who will design systems, contribute code, make key architectural decisions, and help define how software engineering is practiced at BCGEU.
You’ll work on systems and integrations that matter to real operations. You’ll be expected to think clearly, challenge assumptions, and build solutions that are practical, scalable, and fit for purpose in the real world.
We value technical judgment, pragmatic design, and practical outcomes.
The Role
You’ll lead a small development team that builds and maintains external tools used by union members and internal systems BCGEU staff rely on every day – from business applications to integrations with third-party platforms.
This is a technical leadership role, not a people-management role. Your authority comes from architectural judgment, engineering standards, technical mentorship, and hands-on contribution.
You will write and review code, shape solution design, and help raise the team’s engineering maturity.
You’ll work closely with a dedicated Business Analyst and collaborate with IT, Cybersecurity, Privacy, and other stakeholders across the organization. You report to the Director of Development & Records.
This role is ideal for someone who values mission-driven work, cares about long-term system stewardship, enjoys writing code daily, and wants to improve practical engineering maturity in an environment where their judgment will matter.
Your Decision Rights
You own application architecture and technical standards.
You can block releases that do not meet agreed quality or security requirements.
You recommend technical debt prioritization and modernization direction in partnership with the Director.
During incidents, you provide technical leadership on diagnosis, remediation, and follow-up engineering improvements.
You help determine when a solution should be simple, when it should be scalable, and when it should be rethought entirely.
The Opportunity
We are not looking for someone to simply inherit a mature engineering system and keep it running. We are looking for someone who wants to help shape how software is built here.
You will have the opportunity to strengthen engineering standards, improve delivery discipline, guide architectural direction, and help build and support systems that are practical, scalable, and supportable in the real world.
If you want to do meaningful hands-on work, influence technical direction, and raise the maturity of a small development team without disappearing into people management, this role offers that opportunity.
What We’re Looking For
A degree in Computer Science or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and directly relevant recent experience.
Substantial recent experience as a technical lead, or software architect, with direct responsibility for designing, building, and operating production systems in environments where architectural judgment materially affected outcomes.
Demonstrated experience designing application and integration architectures, and making sound trade-offs between monoliths, modular monoliths, service-oriented systems, and microservices.
Strong hands-on development ability. This is not a coordinator role. You should be comfortable writing production code, reviewing code critically, and resolving hard technical problems yourself.
Demonstrated success improving engineering delivery in imperfect environments, including CI/CD practices, technical standards, and operational readiness.
Experience building production systems that are practical, performant, and supportable, not merely polished on paper.
Strong judgment in build-vs-buy decisions, technical debt prioritization, and staged modernization.
Experience working with security requirements, secure coding practices, code analysis, or audit processes.
Ability to explain architectural decisions clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
Extensive recent professional experience with Java is required. This is a core requirement, not a nice-to-have. You should be comfortable designing, building, reviewing, and troubleshooting production Java systems. Experience with additional modern languages used in web, application, or integration development is also expected. Knowledge of Dart, Vue/Vuetify, or Flutter is helpful, but not required. We care most about strong architectural judgment, hands-on technical leadership, and proven ability to deliver practical, scalable systems.
An understanding of the labour movement is an asset. Genuine curiosity about the mission is essential.
What You’ll Be Doing
Own the architecture. Provide technical leadership and architectural oversight for internally developed applications, services, and integrations with third-party systems.
Make the calls that shape our stack. Technology selection, build-vs-buy decisions, and when to pay down technical debt vs. ship features – that’s you.
Write code every day. This is a hands-on role. You’ll be coding, reviewing pull requests, refactoring, and solving hard technical problems alongside your team.
Foster engineering excellence. Share knowledge through code reviews, pairing, and constructive feedback. Build a culture of shared ownership where everyone contributes to raising the bar.
Turn business needs into buildable work. Collaborate with the Business Analyst and stakeholders to translate validated requirements into technical designs and delivery-ready work items.
Lead technical delivery planning. Help sequence work, surface dependencies, identify technical risks early, and give leadership a realistic view of trade-offs, constraints, and delivery implications.
Ship with confidence. Support release planning and delivery – ensuring releases meet stability, performance, and documentation standards with clear rollback and support procedures.
Work across the organization. Collaborate with internal IT, our Cybersecurity Officer, Privacy Officer, Internal Audit, and external vendors to ensure compliance with organizational policies and regulatory requirements.
Build operational maturity. Define and improve logging, monitoring and alerting signals, runbooks, and release/rollback procedures so the team sleeps well at night.
Lead through incidents. Provide technical leadership during application incidents and outages, run post-incident reviews, and prioritize remediation items so the same thing doesn’t happen twice.
In Your First Year, You’ll Likely
Strengthen technical standards and architectural decision-making.
Improve delivery discipline and release confidence.
Help shape the future direction of our application stack.
Mentor the team through hands-on technical leadership.
Design and deliver practical systems and integrations that support real operations.
Our Current Stack
Our current stack includes Java, Spring, Dart, Vue/Vuetify, Flutter, Laravel, PHP. But we are not dogmatic. Part of this role is assessing whether our tools, patterns, and architecture are still the right fit and recommending change when they are not.
This Role May Not Be For You If
You want a people-management role more than a hands-on technical leadership role.
You equate heavy process and polished artefacts with good engineering, even when the problem calls for simpler, more practical solutions.
You have mainly operated within already-mature engineering environments and have not had to improve standards, delivery, or architecture yourself.
You are uncomfortable making architectural trade-offs in imperfect real-world conditions.
What We Offer
Salary: $152,280.64
Vacation: 5 weeks paid, from the start
Benefits: Comprehensive benefits package
Pension: Enrolment in the Public Service Pension Plan
Work Arrangement: Hybrid
