Principal Technical Chief

Belonging to Air Canada is belonging to a Canadian symbol, Air Canada recently voted best airline in North America. Take your career off by joining our innovative and diverse team at the forefront of passenger air transport.

Air Canada is undertaking an ambitious workforce and engineering transformation to fundamentally change the way software is designed, developed and delivered across the company. One of the pillars of this transformation is the adoption of AI-driven engineering practices, modern delivery models and agentic tools that significantly improve developer productivity, time-to-market and operational results.

The principal technical chief will play a fundamental role in the success of the workforce transformation of Air Canada's IT, Data and Digital Solutions (IDS) function, with direct responsibility for enabling and maintaining cost reduction commitments linked to this initiative. By redefining engineering working methods and integrating intelligent automation throughout the software development life cycle, the person occupying this position will help ensure that efficiency gains are real, measurable and scalable.

As a high-level technical leader present in the field, the principal technical chief will help define and implement these new practices within Air Canada's Software Development and Platforms teams. Working closely with the senior management team, the successful candidate will be responsible for translating the transformation strategy into daily technical execution in customer, operational and central service sectors, to ensure adoption, consistency and long-term impact.

Responsibilities:

AI-driven engineering and technical leadership

• Lead by example in the adoption of AI-driven and agentic engineering practices, integrating intelligent automation throughout the software development life cycle.
• Act as a technical authority and practitioner, guiding teams on how to effectively use AI-based development tools for design, coding, testing, deployment and operation.
• Prototype, evaluate and implement emerging tools and frameworks that improve developer productivity and delivery efficiency.

Hands-on technical direction

• Provide day-to-day technical leadership to multiple engineering teams, influencing design decisions and implementation approaches.
• Define and disseminate technical standards, reference implementations and best practices that promote scalability, reliability and maintainability.
• Review and guide essential designs and code bases, ensuring compliance with modern architecture and engineering principles.

Modern working methods and implementation

• Promote modern engineering practices (DevOps, CI/CD, platform engineering and cloud-native delivery) within an AI-driven operating model.
• Collaborate with Engineering and Platform leads to integrate new workflows, playbooks and automations into team-wide execution.
• Mentor Development leads and technical chiefs, developing deep technical knowledge, leadership capabilities and a culture of continuous improvement.
• Collaborate with the workforce transformation team to develop and disseminate formal training sessions and working methods, with the goal of ensuring large-scale adoption and productivity gains across the IDS function.

Cross-domain and business impact

• Work with customer, operational and central service sectors to ensure consistent application of engineering standards and tools.
• Collaborate with Product, Data, Infrastructure and Cybersecurity teams to deliver secure, scalable and integrated solutions.
• Translate corporate strategy into actionable technical initiatives that drive business growth, operational efficiency and cost reduction.

Stakeholder collaboration

• Collaborate closely with senior executives from Software Engineering and Platforms, Digital Products and Platform Products teams to align technical execution with strategic priorities.
• Act as a trusted technical advisor and help management evaluate trade-offs, risks and opportunities related to new technologies and delivery models.
• Support change management efforts by encouraging the adoption and acceptance of new tools and working methods.

Technology innovation

• Drive technological innovation in front-end and back-end engineering, continuously evaluating emerging frameworks, tools and architectural approaches to modernize application development.
• Promote modern user interface architectures, including micro-frontends, reusable component libraries, design systems, server-side rendering and performance optimization.
• Drive innovation in back-end engineering using modern application architectures, microservices, serverless computing, API-first design, event-driven systems and distributed processing.
• Identify opportunities to leverage AI, automation and intelligent development tools to accelerate front-end and back-end development, improve code quality and optimize engineering workflows.
• Create reusable frameworks, shared libraries, reference integrations and engineering standards to improve consistency, scalability and developer productivity.
• Lead technical evaluations, proofs of concept and the adoption of emerging technologies, ensuring innovations translate into practical, scalable and production-ready solutions.

Qualifications

Mandatory

• At least 15 years of experience in software engineering, with a strong track record as a principal engineer, technical lead, solution architect or high-level contributor.
• In-depth, hands-on expertise in modern application development and distributed systems (cloud-native services, APIs, event-driven architectures).
• Proven hands-on experience using AI-assisted development tools, automation frameworks or agentic workflows within engineering teams.
• Proven ability to drive technical change through influence, mentoring and example rather than authority alone.
• Strong communication skills and ability to engage with both engineers and senior executives.
• Experience building systems across multiple domains (customer-facing platforms, operational platforms and central services platforms).
• Ability to lead by example through strong technical understanding and engineering skills.
• In-depth knowledge of integrated development environments, such as Github Co-Pilot and Cursor.
• Proven punctuality and reliability to foster overall team success in a fast-paced environment.
• Strong experience in front-end technologies: Angular/React, JavaScript, TypeScript, HTML5, CSS3, responsive web architecture.
• Strong experience in back-end technologies (Java/Node.js, REST APIs/GraphQL, microservices).

Preferred

• Experience in large-scale mission-critical environments, such as aviation, transportation or other equally complex sectors.
• Experience in platform engineering, internal developer platforms and developer experience tools.
• Knowledge of data platforms, large language models and responsible AI practices.
• Professional experience in highly available regulated environments.
• Experience with AWS cloud services and infrastructure.
• Experience with content management systems, including headless and traditional architectures, composable content platforms, content APIs, omnichannel content delivery, personalization and integration with modern front-end applications.

Employment conditions:

Candidates must be eligible to work in the country concerned at the time a job offer is presented and are responsible for obtaining necessary work permits, visas or other authorizations. Proof of eligibility must be provided before the start date.

Language Requirements

All things being equal, preference will be given to bilingual candidates.

Diversity and inclusion

Air Canada is strongly committed to diversity and inclusion and aims to create a healthy, accessible and rewarding workplace that highlights the unique contribution of our employees to our business success.

As an equal opportunity employer, we encourage diverse applications so that we can build a workforce that is varied and representative of our customers and the communities where we live and serve.