Staff Software Engineer - Custom Projects

Department: Engineering

Location: Canada

Compensation: CA$160K – CA$200K • Offers Equity • Offers Bonus

Employment Type: FullTime

H2 Analytics is redefining how professionals train for high-stakes environments through advanced simulation and data-driven tools. From defence and intelligence to critical infrastructure, our platform helps users train smarter and perform better. Software engineers at H2 build scalable systems, real-time simulations, and AI-powered automation that directly impact mission-critical outcomes. Join a fast-moving team where your code powers elite performance, and innovation is part of the job.

About the team:

H2’s Engineering team develops EASE (Exercise Architect Suite), a tool used by military, intelligence, law enforcement, and emergency response organizations to develop training exercises. Our mission is to make it easy to develop large-scale exercises without a heavy manual burden.

We are building a brand new Custom Projects team at H2 Analytics, focused on building rapid custom applications and prototypes. The initial effort of this team is to build a new simulation tool for use with our intelligence analyst training platform, and leveraging generative AI to produce dynamic, high-fidelity data and realistic user interactions relevant to the training scenario.

This is a hands-on builder role first. You'll spend most of your time writing code, designing systems, prototyping, and shipping. You'll also help hire and grow the team around you, shaping the stack and guiding engineers as they join. But the foundation of this role is building, not governing.

The engineering team is 100% remote; our head office is located in Ottawa and you’re welcome to come in. This role can be located anywhere in Canada with flexible hours, though our core meetings are oriented on the Eastern time zone. We believe in shipping code frequently. We value collaboration. We are driven by results, not process. We use a lightweight Scrum practice and we are dedicated to continuous improvement.

About you:

You are an experienced Staff Software Engineer with at least 8+ years building complex web applications and backend services as a full-stack engineer, and with a minimum of 6 years at a Senior level. You have a scrappy “build-it” mentality, and you excel at rapid prototyping, delivering features in hours and days, not weeks or months. You have both broad and deep technical expertise across many systems and technologies. You take the lead on the most complex features. You love teaching, and you’re a lifelong learner.

We look for:

• Strong full-stack web development experience with modern frontend frameworks (React, Vue) and the ability to build polished, interactive UX

• Expert rapid-prototyping skills

• Expertise with TypeScript and modern backend languages

• Strong practical experience with LLM integration (RAG, prompt engineering, or agent workflows) and enthusiasm for pushing deeper into autonomous agent systems

• Strong event-driven systems experience (WebSockets, message queues, pub/sub)

• Cloud and on-premises infrastructure ownership — you'll architect, deploy, and operate it yourself (AWS, Terraform, Kubernetes). The product will be deployed to cloud and on-premises secure (air-gapped) networks.

• Database architecture across SQL and NoSQL for varied workloads (user data, content feeds, media metadata, time-series)

• Track record of shipping full products with small teams or as a founding/early engineer

• Experience interviewing software engineering candidates at a senior level

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience

• This role is only open to people eligible for a Top Secret security clearance in Canada due to the nature of our work.

Nice to have:

• Go, Rust, Python

• Experience architecting and maintaining production cloud infrastructure (AWS, Terraform, Kubernetes, devops)

• Experience building consumer-style platforms (social media, content/media platforms, messaging)

• Experience with media and content pipelines (video processing, image handling, CDN, streaming)

• Activity feed and recommendation algorithm design

• Simulation, training platform, or serious games background

• Software security background; authentication and authorization, OWASP top 10

What you’ll own:

• Build the platform end-to-end from zero: architecture, implementation, and deployment of simulated social media environments

• Design and implement the AI agent system that drives autonomous, believable bot activity across platforms

• Make key technical decisions: stack selection, service boundaries, data models, infrastructure

• Rapidly prototype and iterate — we measure in days, not sprints

• Lead the day-to-day technical work of the team

• Own the cloud and local infrastructure and that runs the platform in production

• Lead Coach senior software engineers and drive software development excellence

What you’ll help with:

• Partner with Product and Executive leadership to shape what we build and how we build it

• Define the technical roadmap for a new product line

• Hire and onboard the team that will grow around this platform

• Identify and push for technical and process improvements as we scale

What you’ll teach:

• Advanced architectural patterns and software development best practices

• Review and approve code contributions from team members, ensuring quality, security, compliance

What you’ll learn:

• The unique security and infrastructure challenges of building software for defence and intelligence teams

• How defence and intelligence teams train for real-world scenarios using simulated environments

• How to build a team and a product from scratch

What we offer:

• The annual base salary for this role is between CAD $160k - $200k, based on skill and experience.

• Extended health insurance for employees and their dependants

• A generous and flexible vacation policy. We encourage time off to recharge

• Company equity in a growing startup

• Fully remote

• We get together as a team at least once a year to reconnect

• We are committed to building a supportive and diverse company

Vacancy Status:

This is a new role on our team for which we are actively recruiting.

How we use AI:

To help us efficiently review the high volume of applications we receive, H2 Analytics uses AI tools as part of our initial screening process. These tools help identify relevant skills and experience within your resume. However, all final shortlisting and hiring decisions are made by our human recruitment team.