About DFnet Research
DFnet is a leading data-focused Contract Research Organization (CRO) dedicated to advancing clinical research and supporting life sciences organizations in bringing new therapies to market. DFnet’s Software Development team builds proven clinical data management solutions for a diverse global client base, while our Data Management team makes optimal use of these tools to help clients collect and manage the data that drives results. Our Business Development team consistently explores new opportunities and forges new relationships that leverage DFnet’s experience and leadership.
What You’ll Do
Summary
The Engineering Manager is responsible for leading a team of individual contributors building and operating a cloud-native SaaS platform. This role combines people leadership, technical oversight, and delivery accountability. The Engineering Manager ensures the team delivers secure, scalable, and high-quality software while operating with strong engineering discipline and predictable execution.
This leader is accountable for team health, technical quality, and roadmap execution, while aligning engineering output to business priorities. The role requires balancing hands-on technical guidance with strategic planning and operational rigor.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Leadership:
- Leads, coaches and develops a team of software engineers and/or SDETs.
- Establishes clear expectations, accountability, and performance standards.
- Fosters a culture of technical excellence, collaboration, and psychological safety.
- Conducts regular 1:1s, performance reviews, and career development planning.
- Drives team health, engagement, and retention.
- Recruits, interviews, and onboards top SaaS engineering talent.
- Promotes ownership mindset and strong engineering discipline
Technical Skills:
- Leads the design and delivery of a cloud-native SaaS platform.
- Guides architectural decisions aligned with scalability, maintainability, and performance
- Ensures adoption of modern engineering practices:
- CI/CD pipelines
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
- Automated testing strategies
- Code review and quality standards
- Partners with senior engineers on system design and technical roadmaps.
- Oversees implementation of multi-tenant architectures and data isolation models.
- Supports API-first design and modern frontend frameworks (e.g., React).
- Balances technical debt reduction with feature delivery.
Security and Compliance:
- Ensures engineering practices align with secure-by-design principles.
- Partners with security and compliance team to meet regulatory requirements (e.g., SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, 21CFR Part 11).
- Implements secure coding standards and vulnerability management processes.
- Oversees audit trails, role-based access control (RBAC), logging, and data protection standards.
- Drives proactive risk management and mitigation planning.
- Ensures robust disaster recovery, backup, and incident response processes.
Strategy and Planning:
- Translates product vision into executable quarterly roadmap.
- Leads planning, estimation, and delivery forecasting.
- Ensures high predictability and accountability in delivery.
- Balances long-term architectural investments with near-term customer needs.
- Contributes to technical strategy for platform evolution and scalability.
- Tracks and reports on engineering metrics (ie. Velocity, throughput, unplanned work).
- Identifies capability gaps and proactively plan hiring and skill development.
Collaboration and Communication:
- Partners closely with Product, UX, and stakeholders to refine requirements.
- Communicates trade-offs clearly between scope, timeline, risk, and quality.
- Provides transparent reporting to senior leadership on delivery status and risks.
- Supports customer conversations when technical context is required.
- Fosters cross-team collaboration and reduce silos across engineering domains.
- Translates complex technical concepts into business-relevant language.
Preferred Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience.
- 5+ years of software engineering experience in cloud-native SaaS environments.
- 5+ years of direct people management experience leading IC engineers.
- Experience building and operating applications in Azure or AWS.
- Strong understanding of:
- Microservices or modular architectures
- RESTful APIs and distributed systems
- Modern frontend frameworks (React preferred)
- DevOps practices and CI/CD
- Experience operating in regulated or compliance-heavy environments.
- Demonstrated ability to scale teams and systems.
What we are looking for
- Demonstrated ability to adhere to industry regulatory requirements, standards, and DFnet Research Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
- Availability during scheduled work hours and responsiveness to emails, messages, and calls
- Strong executive judgment and decision-making capabilities in complex, regulated environments
- Strong interpersonal skills, communication, characterized by professionalism and a commitment to maintaining confidentiality
- Proficiency with modern collaboration tools and remote-work technologies.
- Strong organizational, prioritization, and time-management skills
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills
- Meticulous attention to detail in all tasks
- Ability to work independently and collaboratively at a management level
Working Conditions:
- The employee is expected to provide their own workspace equipped with necessary tools and a secure internet connection.
- Adherence to all security protocols, including password protection, data encryption, and regular software updates.
Why join Us?:
- Be part of a mission-driven and fast growing CRO and data technology organization that supports the development of innovative therapies to improve patient lives around the globe.
- Collaborative, global environment with opportunities for professional growth and advancement.
- Competitive compensation and benefits package.
CompensationCAD $170,000 -200,000 -annually
