Senior Engineering Manager

🌟 Ready to help reshape a $26B industry and build the future of branded merch?

commonsku is revolutionizing the promotional products industry. Our platform empowers branded merch distributors to work smarter — managing projects, building quotes, placing orders, and collaborating with clients and suppliers seamlessly through the power of the Connected Workflow.

We’re a remote-first, community-driven team obsessed with elevating our customers, their clients, and the broader industry. Our values – Community First, Ten Steps Ahead, Fast Forward, and Delightful Work – guide us. We believe you can innovate, push forward, and do more, while also sharing a laugh, supporting your colleagues, and having a life outside of work. We’re also proud to be officially recognized as a Certified Great Place to Work® in Canada.

If you’re energized by ambitious work, creative collaboration, and helping to build something great, you’ll want to keep reading.

🚀 About the Role: Senior Engineering Manager

We’re growing — and we’re hiring a Senior Engineering Manager to join our Engineering team!

In this role, you’ll manage our eCommerce and Supplier teams, taking responsibility for our Shops product, ecommerce integrations, and supplier integration partnerships. You will drive the technical and people strategy for these segments, partnering closely with Principal Engineers, Product Managers, and UX to deliver high-quality, scalable software solutions that fuel commonsku’s growth. You will shape and execute long-term technical initiatives that anticipate business and platform needs over a 12-18 month horizon, while directly influencing, coaching, and scaling our entire engineering organization.

You’ll collaborate closely with teammates across product and design departments, contribute to a high-trust environment, and play a direct role in shaping the future of the industry.

💡 About You

You’re not just looking for a job — you’re looking for a place to do your best work. You bring:

• A community mindset — You see customers as partners and coworkers as collaborators. You lift others up, always follow through on your commitments, and thrive in a team that does the same. (Community First)

• Momentum and ownership — You act with optimism, take initiative, and turn ideas into results. You move fast and bring others with you. (Fast Forward)

• Vision and boldness — You don’t just react — you anticipate. You think big, challenge the status quo, and push the work (and the industry) forward. (Ten Steps Ahead)

• Joy in the craft — You care deeply about what you build and how it makes people feel. You bring thoughtfulness, transparency, and a sparkling sense of humour to the table. (Delightful Work)

🛠️ What You’ll Do

Here’s what you’ll do:

• Shape Product Strategy: Partner with Product Management and Design to shape roadmaps and define clear technical and performance requirements for future initiatives.

• Champion Agility: Promote an agile mindset with team rituals and processes that support predictable delivery, fast feedback loops, and continuous improvement.

• Lead Project Delivery: Drive the execution of complex, cross-functional engineering projects. Scope and stage work into well-defined milestones, ensuring alignment with commonsku's vision.

• Provide Technical Leadership: Act as a technical leader and thought partner, resolving ambiguity and applying strong engineering judgment to ensure sustainable and scalable systems.

• Cultivate Talent: Build, grow, and retain a team of engineering professionals by fostering an environment of psychological safety, accountability, and technical excellence.

• Coach & Mentor: Provide regular coaching, feedback, and career development aligned with our internal progression framework.

• Connect Team to Mission: Ensure each team member understands how their work connects to customers, our mission, and our broader business strategy.

• Navigate Trade-offs: Balance business, customer, and technical trade-offs thoughtfully and transparently.

• Drive Engineering Excellence: Identify strategic opportunities to improve engineering practices, tools, or systems, and drive adoption of these enhancements at scale.

• Represent Engineering Interdepartmentally: Champion the engineering team in company-level initiatives, helping others understand the impact, scope, and feasibility of proposed technical solutions.

• Facilitate Clear Communication: Model clear, proactive, and tailored communication across levels and audiences while sharing learnings, progress, and outcomes broadly.

🔍 What You Bring

Some of the qualities that help you thrive in this role:

• 8+ years of experience in software engineering, with a proven track record of delivering scalable, high-quality software in a fast-paced environment.

• 3+ years of experience managing engineers, including hiring, onboarding, performance management, and career development.

• Proven experience partnering with Product and Design teams to shape roadmaps, define scope, and deliver customer-centric features.

• Strong technical background with hands-on experience in system design, architecture, and modern development practices.

• Demonstrated ability to lead complex, cross-functional projects from concept to delivery, balancing technical trade-offs and business outcomes.

• Strong understanding of Agile principles and experience evangelizing them.

• A proven ability to build and scale engineering processes that support team health, delivery speed, and code quality.

• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal, with the ability to create clarity and alignment across technical and non-technical stakeholders.

• An action-oriented mindset, a customer-first philosophy, and the ability to think and act strategically.

• Comfort working independently and asynchronously, while also prioritizing collaboration and connection with people.

• Experience leveraging AI coding tools and workflows, and establishing best practices for engineering teams.

• Bonus: Experience with devops tools/practices; experience with Generative AI and applying it to solve customer problems.

💰 Compensation & Perks

We believe in fair, transparent compensation. Starting salary for this role is $185,000–$200,000, depending on previous experience and skillset, plus a 5% annual bonus opportunity based on company performance.

New hires are expected to come in at the midpoint of this range. However, if this role sounds perfect for you and your expectations are outside of this range, we encourage you to apply and let us know in your application about your ideal package. If we agree that it’s a good fit, we will have open discussion around what’s possible.

Plus:

• Remote-first culture (with plenty of excellent in-person experiences sprinkled in)

• Company-wide closure between December 25th and January 1st

• Health and dental benefits, including a $1,000 healthcare spending account

• RRSP/TFSA contributions up to $3,000 a year (no employee contribution required!)

• Twice-yearly company wide summits (we call it HQ and you’ll love it)

• A delightful team of smart people who are good at what they do

🌎 Location

This role is open to candidates based in Toronto who are eligible to work in Canada.

We’re remote-first, but are looking for folks with the flexibility to attend in person events on an ad hoc basis and travel for company offsites! We work well remotely because we also get to know each other in person!

🌱 A Bit More About Us

commonsku supports hundreds of promotional products distributors and suppliers with technology that drive efficiency, growth, and connection. Our skummunity (commonsku + community = skummunity, get it?) is powered by events, education, and shared knowledge and is core to who we are.

We’ve grown by being “for promo by promo” and now, we’re scaling our impact to elevating an entire industry. We’d love your help doing it.

🤖 A Note About AI

We use AI every day at commonsku to be faster and better. If you use AI tools to help you draft your resume or cover letter, that’s totally fine — just make sure what you submit reflects you. We want to hear your authentic voice, not ChatGPT’s.

📬 How to Apply

If this role feels like a fit, apply now at https://commonsku.com/careers!

We try our level best to review and respond to every application we receive. So, once you’ve applied, wait to hear from a member of our People team with an update. If it looks like a good fit, expect a phone interview as the first step.

By the way, you don’t need to meet 100% of the requirements — we value potential, learning, and diversity of thought. Tell us why you're excited, and let’s chat.

❤️ commonsku is an Equal Opportunity Employer

We’re committed to building a diverse team that reflects the skummunity we serve. We welcome applicants of all backgrounds, experiences, and identities.