Lead Software Engineer

About Morningstar Retirement
At Morningstar Retirement Group, we're all in for investors. Our mission is to empower individuals to achieve better retirement outcomes through personalized, data-driven guidance. We build innovative tools that adapt to each investor's unique financial situation.
Our teams combine strong product thinking, close cross-functional collaboration, and thoughtful application of AI to solve complex problems and deliver high-impact solutions.
Location: Toronto, ON (Hybrid - 4 days in office)
The Role
In this role, you'll split your time evenly between technical team leadership and individual contributor.
As the leader of a cross-functional squad, you'll collaborate closely with stakeholders to drive timely delivery of projects. Your responsibilities will encompass end-to-end ownership of components, with a focus on maintaining quality, stability, and driving technical enhancements. You will form strong relationships with stakeholders to ensure alignment and success. Additionally, you will have the opportunity to learn and adapt to emerging technologies, as we strive to innovate and refine our business.
As an engineer, you'll primarily work with modern JavaScript/TypeScript frameworks such as Vue3, Nuxt, and NestJS, while contributing to backend systems built with C#/.NET and SQL.
Job Responsibilities:

• Lead technical discussions and contribute to architectural decisions for new features and services
• Design, implement, and maintain scalable, reliable, secure, and high-quality software solutions
• Mentor engineers to uphold code standards and to contribute to the team's technical growth
• Continuously learn and adapt to new technologies and processes
• Participate in the on-call rotation for production support every two months

AI-Driven Engineering
We are actively integrating AI across the software development lifecycle to improve speed, quality, and scalability. This includes:

• AI-assisted development to accelerate implementation
• Automated code reviews to improve consistency and maintainability
• Intelligent issue triage and prioritization
• Workflow automation to reduce manual overhead
• Exploration of emerging capabilities such as autonomous agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP), and AI-generated testing

We're looking for engineers who are excited to experiment with and apply these technologies in real-world scenarios.
Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience building production-grade applications
• Strong proficiency in JavaScript and TypeScript
• Experience with modern frontend frameworks (e.g., Vue.js or React)
• Solid understanding of browser technologies, HTML, and CSS
• Experience building backend services using frameworks such as Nuxt or NestJS
• Strong understanding of fundamental software concepts including Design Patterns, Object-Oriented Programming, HTTP(S), RESTful API, SSO, security, unit testing, and databases.
• Possesses Agile and project management skills to contribute effectively to team workflows
• Strong communication, collaboration, and leadership skills.
• Experience using AI tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Claude, CLI-based agents) to enhance development workflows

Why Join Us

• Work on meaningful problems that directly impact investors' financial futures
• Collaborate in a highly cross-functional, product-driven environment
• Gain hands-on experience with cutting-edge AI tools and workflows
• Build modern, full-stack applications with real ownership and impact

Base Salary Compensation Range
$101,422-148,755
Incentive Target Percentage
12.5% Annual
If you receive and accept an offer from us, we require that personal and any related investments be disclosed confidentiality to our Compliance team (days vary by region). These investments will be reviewed to ensure they meet Code of Ethics requirements. If any conflicts of interest are identified, then you will be required to liquidate those holdings immediately. In addition, dependent on your department and location of work certain employee accounts must be held with an approved broker (for example all, U.S. employee accounts). If this applies and your account(s) are not with an approved broker, you will be required to move your holdings to an approved broker.
Morningstar's hybrid work environment gives you the opportunity to collaborate in-person each week as we've found that we're at our best when we're purposely together on a regular basis. In most of our locations, our hybrid work model is four days in-office each week. A range of other benefits are also available to enhance flexibility as needs change. No matter where you are, you'll have tools and resources to engage meaningfully with your global colleagues.