Remote
Canada, US
$139K–$235K
💻Engineering
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At CoLab, we help mechanical engineering teams bring life-changing products to market years sooner.
CoLab is the AI platform for driving stronger engineering decisions. Every design review in CoLab builds a knowledge repository of design feedback, decisions, and lessons learned - which AI agents draw from to flag issues on future designs before they compound. The more your team works in CoLab, the smarter it gets and the faster you arrive at the ideal design. Companies like Ford, Komatsu, and Johnson Controls use CoLab to catch issues earlier, eliminate rework cycles, and bring products to market faster.
Founded in St. John’s, Newfoundland, CoLab has grown quickly from our first customer in 2019 to a rapidly scaling company. We’ve recently been recognized on Deloitte’s Fast 50™ and Fast 500™, and named a Canadian company to watch by The Globe and Mail and Financial Post.
We're looking for a Senior Backend Developer to join our Build Operator team.
Operator isn't a chatbot bolted onto our product. It's becoming the intelligence layer across CoLab, helping engineering teams search company knowledge, surface design decisions, answer complex questions, and generate insights from years of engineering work.
You'll join the team responsible for the backend systems that make this possible. That means building scalable retrieval pipelines, evolving our AI search infrastructure, integrating structured and unstructured engineering data, and developing the services that power intelligent experiences across the platform.
Over the next year, Operator will expand well beyond conversational search. You'll help build capabilities like company-wide knowledge retrieval, dynamic reporting, AI-generated dashboards, and personalized engineering insights that become embedded throughout CoLab.
This is a role for someone who enjoys solving deep backend problems. You'll spend far more time thinking about data architecture, search quality, retrieval systems, and scalable services than building user interfaces.
The work is complex and often ambiguous. This role exists because there often isn’t an existing pattern to follow.
You're an experienced backend engineer who enjoys building systems that make complex information useful.
You like thinking about how data is organized, retrieved, and transformed into something customers can trust. Whether you're designing APIs, optimizing distributed systems, or improving search relevance, you care about building infrastructure that quietly powers exceptional product experiences.
You don't need previous experience building AI products, but you're excited about applying modern AI technologies to solve real customer problems.
You likely won't enjoy this role if:
You'll thrive if:
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.
Health Insurance
Dental Insurance
Mental Health Benefits
Fitness Stipend
401(k) Match
Stock Options
Unlimited PTO
Home Office Stipend
Company Offsites / Retreats
Parental Leave
Learning & Development Budget
Mentorship Program
Team Events & Social Budget
Employee Referral Bonus
Employee Recognition Awards
Most of CoLab's open roles are remote-tagged for Canada, with several also open to the United States and broader North America. CoLab also lists two Europe-remote roles (Industry Strategy Manager and Key Account Executive) and one hybrid role based in St. John's, NL or Toronto, ON.
CoLab's careers page highlights health and dental coverage with the employer paying up to 100% of premiums, RRSP and 401(k) matching, stock options, unlimited PTO, a mental health benefit up to $1,000 per year, a home office stipend up to $1,000, and parental, maternity, or adoption top-up to 80% for 15 weeks.
CoLab has raised $117.6M in total funding, including a $72M Series C in November 2025, giving it a stable base for continued hiring and growth.
CoLab is hiring across engineering (Mechanical Engineer, Forward Deployed Engineer, Senior Back End Developer, Senior Full Stack Developer), sales (Key Account Executive, Director of Sales, Major Account Director), customer success (Strategic CSM, Senior Implementation Specialist), and marketing (Senior Director Growth Marketing, Senior Product Marketing Manager).
CoLab runs a CoLaborator of the Week program, announced by the CEO at the company-wide weekly meeting with a gift card, alongside quarterly performance reviews and a referral bonus of $750 to $9,000.
