Lead DevOps Engineer at Buchanan Group – Toronto, Ontario

• Inventors of Brand Power - the most powerful, iconic TV ad platform driving brand sales
• Creators of Home Tester Club - the world’s largest digital community of shoppers delivering social proof content

The Role

We are seeking an experienced and visionary Lead DevOps Engineer to spearhead the evolution of our infrastructure, automation, and operational practices. This is a pivotal role for an individual passionate about driving technical excellence, fostering a strong DevOps culture, and mentoring a growing team.

You will play a critical part in shaping our future, transitioning our applications to modern containerized environments, and implementing advanced AIOps strategies.

This is an incredible opportunity to make a significant impact within a growing company. You'll have the autonomy to drive innovation, build a high-performing team, and work on challenging projects that directly contribute to our success. We offer a collaborative environment, competitive compensation, and opportunities for continuous professional development.

This is a new vacancy.

The Brand Power Company

The Brand Power Company pioneered Third-Party endorsement advertising and has been the absolute global leader in educational ad content for 35+ years. Working with the world’s biggest CPG and OTC brands, our platforms, including Brand Power, Medifacts and Experts Review, have driven phenomenal sales growth for the world’s largest tier-one marketers across all media touchpoints from TV, digital/social to our latest innovation, Augmented Reality at Point of Sale.

True to our origins of providing maximum time and cost efficiencies, and measurable ROI, we also run the world’s largest e-community of shoppers. hometesterclub.com is the only global partner delivering ratings & reviews, user-generated content, insights, word-of-mouth, research, and compellingly authentic rich video content for brands worldwide.

We’re all about expert testimony and peer-to-peer endorsement that can say more about a brand than a brand could ever say about itself. And the only measure of our success is the sales success of our clients.

As big fans of authenticity – not just in the solutions we provide, but in the people we welcome to our team – we’re looking for a genuine team player who shares our love for collaborating, creating, and celebrating awesome results for our clients.

Responsibilities

• Strategic Leadership & Team Growth: Lead, mentor, and grow our existing DevOps team. Foster a culture of continuous learning, knowledge sharing, and best practices, empowering the team to deliver high-quality, scalable solutions.
• Infrastructure Evolution: Drive the next phase of our AWS cloud infrastructure, ensuring scalability, reliability, security, and cost-efficiency. This includes optimizing existing resources and pioneering new solutions.
• CI/CD Pipeline Enhancement: Design, implement, and maintain robust, automated CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions to accelerate software delivery, improve developer experience, and ensure code quality.
• Observability & Monitoring Excellence: Advance our logging, monitoring, and alerting systems (leveraging New Relic) to provide proactive insights into application performance, infrastructure health, and security posture.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Champion: Continue to build out and manage our infrastructure using Infrastructure as Code principles, primarily with Terraform and other automation tools, ensuring consistency and repeatability.
• Containerization & Migration Lead: Play a key role in supporting our strategic migration initiative, moving our Windows-hosted applications towards containerized solutions running efficiently within AWS.
• Software Engineering Partnership: Collaborate closely with our software engineering teams, providing expert guidance and infrastructure-related support to facilitate feature development, deployment, and ongoing operations.
• Compliance & Security Automation: Interface with our compliance officer to create, automate, and provide necessary audit and compliance reports, ensuring adherence to regulatory standards and internal policies.
• DevOps Strategy & Roadmap: Define and implement the overall DevOps strategy and roadmap, aligning technical vision with business objectives to drive continuous improvement.
• Contribute to the technical roadmap and strategic planning for our software products.
• Promote a culture of continuous learning, knowledge sharing, and technical excellence within the team.
• Participate in the recruitment and onboarding of new engineering talent.
• AIOps Integration: Explore, evaluate, and integrate AI/ML-driven operations (AIOps) practices to enhance proactive incident detection, root cause analysis, and intelligent automation within our systems.

Required Qualifications

• Education: Undergraduate degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Experience: 6+ years of progressive professional experience in DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), or a related infrastructure-focused role.
• Leadership: 1-2 years of experience in a lead or senior capacity, with demonstrated ability to mentor junior engineers, lead technical initiatives, and drive team growth.
• Cloud Expertise: Extensive hands-on experience with AWS services, particularly around EC2 (Windows), RDS (SQL Server), VPC, S3, IAM, CloudWatch, ECR, and container orchestration services (ECS/EKS).
• Infrastructure as Code: Deep expertise with Terraform for provisioning and managing cloud infrastructure.
• CI/CD Mastery: Proven experience designing and implementing advanced CI/CD pipelines, with strong proficiency in GitHub Actions.
• Containerization: Solid understanding and practical experience with container technologies (Docker) and orchestration platforms.
• Monitoring & Observability: Hands-on experience with monitoring, logging, and alerting tools, specifically New Relic.
• Scripting & Automation: Strong scripting skills (e.g., Bash, PowerShell) for automating routine tasks and managing systems.
• Operating Systems: Familiarity with both Windows and Linux operating systems, including Active Directory integration.
• Networking: Understanding of core networking concepts, including DNS, firewalls, and load balancing (experience with Cloudflare a plus).
• Communication: Exceptional written and verbal skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences.
• Global: Experience working effectively within a global delivery model.
• Hybrid: Ability to work 1-2 days per week from our Toronto Harbourfront office.

• Familiarity with database administration principles, especially for SQL Server.
• Knowledge of security best practices in cloud environments.
• Certifications such as AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional.

Our Benefits

• 4 weeks' vacation and other leave entitlements
• Relaxed (and pretty cool...if we don't say so ourselves) advertising agency environment with a commitment to professional development and progression
• Hybrid work model
• This isn't your typical 9-5, it's truly a global role and you will help lead initiatives that drive impact cross-functionally across multiple timezones, with the flexibility in your schedule to collaborate while maintaining balance.
• The base salary for this position at the time of this posting may range from CA$120,000 to CA$150,000. Individual compensation varies based on job-related factors, including location, business needs, level of responsibility, experience, and qualifications
• Discretionary bonus scheme
• You'll be part of a forward-thinking team that values innovation, collaboration, and personal growth.
• A competitive compensation package including comprehensive benefits and plenty of opportunities for professional development.
• You'll have the chance to work on challenging projects, make a significant impact, and grow your career in a supportive and dynamic environment.

We’re big fans of authentic

Diversity and inclusion are fundamental to who we are, and what has always made us tick. We recruit and reward people based on capability and performance. We don’t discriminate based on race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression, lifestyle, age, educational background, national origin, religion or physical ability. You may think we care about your purple hair or love of cats, but we don’t. We believe treating everyone with authenticity and respect simply gives us the best chance of delivering success.

If you are a passionate and experienced Lead Software Engineer looking for your next challenge, we encourage you to apply! Please submit your resume and cover letter detailing your relevant experience.

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Our hiring process includes AI screening for keywords and minimum qualifications. Recruiters review all results.