Engineering Manager

About CoLab

At CoLab, we want to help mechanical engineering teams bring life-changing products to market years sooner.

CoLab is a cloud based platform for engineering design review. We make it easy for subject matter experts (SMEs) across your business to access, evaluate, and comment on 2D drawings and 3D models. Our built-in AI peer checker, AutoReview, scans designs for common errors or non-compliance with your standards and guidelines. AutoReview creates markups and comments on your files, in context – just like a human checker.

With CoLab, human SMEs and AI work together to help you make better decisions and improve designs faster. We automatically capture knowledge from across your global business that would otherwise be buried in emails, spreadsheets, slide decks, and unknown locations in Sharepoint or PLM. Then, we make sure every lesson learned and every design guideline is applied exactly when it matters.

Companies like Johnson Controls, Komatsu, Schaeffler, and Polaris have launched products 40% faster, cut BOM costs by 50%, and reduced quality escapes by 15% in 1 year.

About the Role

We’re hiring an Engineering Manager to lead Build Operator, one of the most strategically important product areas at CoLab.

Operator is our conversational AI agent for engineering teams. It helps users search engineering knowledge, understand complex design data, execute actions inside CoLab, and automate review workflows.

A lot of the work on Operator is still highly iterative and experimental. You’ll help the team move through cycles of theory → prototype → test → abandon → repeat. The right person finds that energizing, not frustrating.

You’ll lead a team of 8 engineers alongside a Product Manager and Designer. You’ll report to the Director of Engineering and work closely with product and technical leadership shaping the future of AI at CoLab.

We’re looking for a highly technical, player-coach Engineering Manager. Someone who can lead through deep involvement in the work — not from a distance. You should be comfortable jumping into architecture discussions, reviewing implementation details, unblocking engineers, and contributing technically when needed.

You won’t find heavy processes here for the sake of process. We operate with lightweight planning rhythms, clear ownership, and high trust. Monthly direction-setting happens collaboratively, while execution is managed week-to-week with a strong pulse on progress and product vision.

Our Ideal Candidate

You’ll likely do well in this role if you:

• Have experience building applied-AI product features — not just integrating APIs, but working through the realities of experimentation, uncertainty, and evolving product behavior

• Are highly technical and enjoy getting into the details with your team

• Know how to balance speed with sound engineering judgment

• Can lead without hiding behind process

• Stay calm when product direction changes based on new information

• Enjoy working closely with Product and Design in ambiguous problem spaces

• Care deeply about team effectiveness, but understand that different phases of product development require different operating models

Job Responsibilities

• Lead and support a team of engineers building CoLab’s AI-powered Operator platform

• Drive technical execution across applying LLMs, agentic workflows, vector search, retrieval systems AI guardrail models, and design data processing

• Help the team rapidly test hypotheses and iterate toward product-market fit

• Contribute technically through architecture guidance, code reviews, debugging, and hands-on problem solving

• Partner closely with Product and Design to shape roadmap direction and execution strategy

• Establish lightweight but effective planning and delivery practices

• Coach and develop engineers across varying levels of experience

• Create clarity and momentum in a product area where requirements and solutions evolve quickly

Qualifications

• Experience leading software engineering teams in a B2B SaaS environment

• Strong technical background with the ability to contribute meaningfully to system design and engineering discussions

• Experience building or shipping applied AI/ML product features

• Familiarity with modern LLM tooling, retrieval systems, vector search, and agentic workflows

• Experience working in highly iterative product environments with significant ambiguity

• Strong product and engineering judgment

• Excellent communication skills and low-ego collaboration style

Extra Details

• This is a full-time, permanent position with a competitive compensation package that includes stock options.

• This role offers an extended health and benefits package that includes unlimited paid vacation and RRSP matching.

• Remote in Canada

Equity Note

Frequently cited statistics show that people who identify with historically marginalized groups are likely to apply to jobs only if they meet 100% of the qualifications. We encourage you to help us break that statistic and apply even if you don’t meet every single qualification—your potential is what matters most to us.