Sr. Software Engineering Manager, Apple Pay – Apple – Montreal, QC

Montreal’s tech scene has a new opportunity worth paying attention to. Apple‘s Wallet, Payments & Commerce (WPC) team is hiring a Senior Software Engineering Manager to lead engineers building the infrastructure behind Apple Pay, transit passes, event tickets, digital keys, and identity solutions — software that touches the lives of millions of people every day.

This is a leadership role for someone who is just as comfortable in an architecture review as they are in a career conversation with a direct report. You’ll guide a team of highly experienced engineers operating mission-critical distributed systems at Apple’s scale, setting technical direction across multiple concurrent workstreams while creating an environment where your engineers can do their best work.

About the Role: Sr. Software Engineering Manager, Apple Pay

As part of the WPC team in Montreal, you’ll lead engineers who take full end-to-end ownership of resilient, reliable distributed systems — from initial architecture through to on-call support and monitoring. You’ll set both technical and organisational direction, driving accountability for outcomes that reach well beyond your immediate team. Your engineers have genuine autonomy, and your job is to protect and strengthen that culture.

You’ll be close enough to the technical work to have informed opinions on architecture and trade-offs, while remaining disciplined enough to let your team own the decisions. This role demands someone who can earn the deep technical respect of seasoned engineers while simultaneously fostering their professional growth and navigating complex organizational challenges with clarity and composure.

Benefits and Salary

Apple is known for offering a highly competitive total compensation package that goes well beyond a base salary. Employees typically enjoy comprehensive health and dental benefits, a stock purchase plan, employee discounts on Apple products, paid time off, and access to ongoing professional development resources. No specific salary figures are listed in this posting, but compensation at Apple is structured to reflect the seniority and scope of the role.

Responsibilities

In this senior leadership role, you’ll drive the technical and operational health of a team building large-scale distributed systems that power Apple’s payments and commerce ecosystem. Every responsibility listed below reflects the direct impact your leadership will have on both your team and millions of end users worldwide.

• Lead and grow a team of engineers who architect and operate mission-critical distributed systems at Apple’s scale across multiple workstreams
• Set technical direction by participating in architecture reviews, weighing in on trade-offs, and helping define the long-term technical roadmap
• Coach and develop engineers at all levels, including technical leads and emerging managers, creating real conditions for career growth
• Drive operational excellence including on-call culture, incident management, reliability practices, and engineering delivery cadence
• Manage intake and prioritisation across concurrent projects, balancing roadmap planning with delivery accountability
• Foster team autonomy by protecting engineers’ ownership of their solutions across the full development lifecycle — design, build, operate, monitor
• Communicate effectively across diverse, global audiences to drive consensus on complex technical topics
• Navigate ambiguity and lead complex projects from conception through to production with composure and tenacity

Requirements / Skills

Apple is looking for a technically grounded leader who has built and operated high-scale engineering teams in complex, mission-critical environments. The ideal candidate brings a blend of deep systems knowledge, strong interpersonal communication, and a genuine passion for developing the engineers around them — no specific formal degree is required.

• Substantial leadership experience managing software engineering teams that build and operate mission-critical distributed systems at scale
• Strong communication skills, verbal and written, with a track record of driving consensus on complex technical topics with global stakeholders
• Proven coaching and mentoring ability, including experience developing technical leads and emerging managers
• Hands-on distributed systems background with deep understanding of fundamentals such as resilience, reliability, and fault tolerance
• Demonstrated operational excellence across on-call culture, incident response, reliability practices, and delivery planning
• Preferred: Java or Kotlin and Spring background, with experience leading teams building high-volume REST and/or gRPC services
• Preferred: Cloud-native AWS expertise including containerisation, orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes), and observability tooling (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, OpenTelemetry)
• Preferred: Fintech or payments experience in compliance-sensitive environments is a strong asset for this role

How to Apply

To apply, visit the official Apple job posting using the link below. Make sure your resume is up to date and tailored to highlight your experience leading distributed systems teams before submitting.

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