Lead Full Stack Engineer

As a Lead Full Stack Engineer, you will shape the technical direction for your area, lead complex engineering programs across multiple teams, and establish standards for how solutions are designed, built, tested, and operated. You will deliver secure, reliable, and user-centred solutions that support business objectives, while translating business strategy into architectural and delivery decisions.

In this role, you will be accountable for outcomes beyond your own deliverables, including the technical quality and coherence of solutions developed by others. You will lead initiatives from concept through production support, make informed decisions where no established precedent exists, and influence senior technology and business leaders. Success requires recognized technical depth, sound judgement in ambiguous situations, and a genuine commitment to mentoring engineers and raising engineering standards.

Position Responsibilities:

• Set the technical direction for the design, development, testing, delivery, and continuous improvement of full-stack business applications.
• Lead the design of user interfaces, databases, APIs, and server-side logic, ensuring coherent end-to-end architecture.
• Establish disciplined coding practices, design patterns, automation, and semantic versioning standards that enable agility and high-quality delivery at scale.
• Create and review detailed system design specifications that guide development across multiple workstreams and teams.
• Define automated testing strategies and quality gates to ensure solutions meet established standards and user requirements.
• Direct investigative spikes to reduce technical uncertainty and risk, and make the resulting architectural decisions.
• Lead root-cause analysis for complex, cross-system defects and drive systemic improvements in efficiency, reliability, and maintainability.
• Own the technical debt and modernization roadmap for the area and build support for the investment needed to deliver it.
• Facilitate ideation, prototyping, and design sessions, documenting decisions and outcomes.
• Set documentation standards for architecture decision records, runbooks, deployment, maintenance, and support, while ensuring effective knowledge transfer.
• Lead peer-review practices and mentor engineers at different career levels to strengthen technical capability across the organization.
• Represent the team’s technical position in architecture forums and with senior stakeholders and governance bodies.
• Required Qualifications:
• 10+ years of experience as a Full Stack Software Engineer, including demonstrated experience leading technical delivery across multiple teams and owning solutions from design through production support.
• Expertise in a significant range of the technologies listed below, with working knowledge across others. Candidates are not expected to have experience with every item; recognized depth in several areas and sound judgement in selecting appropriate technologies are most important.
• Languages and runtimes: Java, TypeScript, JavaScript, Node.js, Python, C#, .NET, and SQL.
• Back-end frameworks: Spring Boot, Spring Security, Spring Data JPA/Hibernate, and NestJS or Express.js.
• Front-end development: React, micro-frontends, enterprise component or design libraries, CSS, Tailwind, SCSS, and React state management and data fetching.
• Architecture and design: Distributed systems, event-driven and asynchronous patterns, domain-driven design, API lifecycle and versioning, and resilience and failure-mode design.
• Integration and APIs: Microservices, REST APIs/OpenAPI, Backend-for-Frontend, Azure API Management, and Azure Event Hubs or Service Bus.
• Data and storage: Microsoft SQL Server, Azure SQL, Azure Cosmos DB or MongoDB, Redis, Flyway or similar database migration tooling, and data modelling at scale.
• Cloud and platform: Microsoft Azure, Kubernetes/AKS, Docker and containers, Terraform, and Helm or Kustomize.
• Build and CI/CD: Maven or Gradle, npm or pnpm, Git/GitHub, GitHub Actions, and release and change management.
• Testing and quality: JUnit, Jest or Vitest, Playwright or Selenium, Bruno or REST Assured, SonarQube, and test strategy definition.
• Security and identity: OAuth 2.0, OIDC, JWT, OWASP secure coding, dependency and CVE management tools such as Snyk, PII and data protection, and threat modelling.
• Observability: New Relic or Application Insights, structured logging and tracing, and SLI/SLO definition.
• AI-assisted engineering: GitHub Copilot or equivalent tools, prompt and context engineering, and responsible-use standards.
• Proven experience defining application and service architecture and influencing architectural decisions beyond your immediate team.
• Demonstrated experience leading complex technical programs across multiple teams with competing priorities and interdependencies.
• A track record of establishing engineering standards or best practices adopted beyond your immediate squad.
• Experience mentoring and supporting the growth of engineers, including senior engineers.
• Deep knowledge of Agile and DevOps principles, with practices that emphasize testing, continuous integration, and rapid, safe releases.
• Expert-level foundation in data structures, algorithms, and object-oriented design.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain technical vision, options, trade-offs, and outcomes to engineers, senior stakeholders, and non-technical audiences.
• Sound judgement and accountability when making consequential decisions with incomplete information.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Front-end and digital experience: Next.js and Adobe Experience Manager.
• Back-end and eventing: Spring Batch, Spring Cloud/Integration, Azure Functions, and JMS.
• Data and analytics: Databricks/Spark, Azure Data Factory, ETL and data pipelines, Azure Storage, KQL, and Azure Data Explorer.
• Platform and infrastructure as code: Flux/GitOps, Istio service mesh, Azure Key Vault, and Azure networking, DNS, or WAF.
• Legacy integration: z/OS Connect, DB2, batch file/SFTP integration, mainframe-fronting, and strangler patterns.
• Quality and security tooling: Xray test management, performance and load testing, and chaos or resilience testing.
• Advanced AI engineering: Agentic development workflows, LLM application patterns, evaluation, and guardrail design.
• Experience leading a platform migration, decommissioning initiative, or large-scale modernization program.
• Experience evaluating and selecting vendors, platforms, or strategic tools.
• Experience working in a regulated environment, with awareness of audit, control, and compliance obligations.
• Contributions to the broader technical community through internal guilds or chapters, conference presentations, open-source work, or published writing.
• Formal architecture accreditation or equivalent demonstrated capability.

When you join our team:

• We’ll empower you to learn and grow the career you want.
• We’ll recognize and support you in a flexible environment where well-being and inclusion are more than just words.
• As part of our distributed team, we’ll support you in shaping the future you want to see.

The role being advertised is an existing vacancy.

About Manulife and John Hancock

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, helping people make their decisions easier and lives better. To learn more about us, visit .

Manulife is an Equal Opportunity Employer

At Manulife/John Hancock, we embrace our diversity. We strive to attract, develop and retain a workforce that is as diverse as the customers we serve and to foster an inclusive work environment that embraces the strength of cultures and individuals. We are committed to fair recruitment, retention, advancement and compensation, and we administer all of our practices and programs without discrimination on the basis of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion or religious beliefs, creed, sex (including pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions), sexual orientation, genetic characteristics, veteran status, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability, or any other ground protected by applicable law.

Referenced Salary Location

Waterloo, Ontario Hybrid

Salary range is expected to be between

$113,260.00 CAD - $210,340.00 CAD

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