Senior Software Developer - One45 Product Team

This is a remote Senior Software Developer opportunity within Canada. Join the One45 team at Acuity Insights, working on a product that significantly impacts health professions education across North America.

One45 is a core product of Acuity Insights, utilized by medical schools for managing complex operations such as clinical placements, rotation scheduling, evaluations, curriculum management, learner records, and accreditation reporting. This established system, relied upon by clients for over a decade, supports tens of thousands of learners, educators, administrators, and clinical faculty annually.

We are seeking a Senior Software Developer to contribute to the evolution of One45. This role involves both maintaining a stable, widely adopted product with over twenty years of history and actively participating in its significant modernization. The team is focused on evolving APIs, improving data access and integrations, rethinking major workflows, and enhancing software development with AI-assisted tooling.

You will help improve a product that institutions depend on daily while contributing to a modernization effort moving from planning to execution. This is an opportunity to shape the product's future, team dynamics, and upcoming initiatives.

What You'll Work On

This role involves a blend of maintenance and new development. Initially, you'll gain production system context through customer-facing enhancements, bug fixes, and workflow improvements, understanding the historical product decisions and interconnected workflows.

Immediate tasks may include:

• Improving evaluation workflows, enhancing administrative control over delivery, management, and communication.
• Clarifying assessment information, making grades, scores, and learner data easier for programs to interpret.
• Refining permissions and access controls to manage complex roles and workflows across programs.
• Addressing day-to-day friction by fixing bugs and improving workflows that impact daily users.

This foundational work is crucial for responsible modernization. Over time, your focus will shift to larger initiatives, including:

• API modernization: Building next-generation APIs for easier platform integration, extension, and evolution.
• Evolving core modules: Reworking foundational areas like scheduling, placements, and lottery management to align with current institutional operations.
• Improving data access: Enhancing reporting, integrations, and analytics to help schools leverage existing One45 data.
• AI-assisted software development: Integrating AI throughout the development lifecycle, from implementation and testing to review and documentation.

If you enjoy contributing ideas, challenging assumptions, and shaping project direction, you will thrive here.

How the Team Works

One45 operates on a shared ownership model, with developers contributing across the platform where work is most critical. A typical week involves code reviews, investigating production issues, refining requirements with Product, working on enhancements, and testing features.

Everyone contributes across the stack, participates in code reviews, and helps improve the system. A dedicated Product Manager is deeply embedded, collaborating closely with engineers on solutions, prioritization, and trade-offs.

The team comprises three developers, a Development Manager, and co-op students, fostering broad ownership. Understanding system context is vital in this mature environment. As the team grows, we are investing in technical depth and leadership to distribute ownership and accelerate decision-making.

You'll join a group actively enhancing work processes, knowledge sharing, and decision-making. The team values every voice, and impact comes from thoughtful questions, challenging assumptions, sharing context, and driving work forward.

The Engineering Environment

One45 is primarily built with PHP, Symfony, MySQL, and React. The platform's twenty-year evolution means navigating multiple generations of engineering and product decisions. You'll encounter both modern and historically rich parts of the system.

This environment suits those who prefer understanding existing systems before implementing changes. Much of the work involves building context, understanding past decisions, and advancing the system without rebuilding from scratch. The goal is continuous improvement while supporting existing institutions.

Success in this role requires comfort working across the stack with a backend lean. While deep PHP expertise isn't required on day one, an interest in learning and working within the current architecture is essential.

AI is an integral part of the team's workflow, with tools like Claude Code, Copilot, and Codex used for implementation, testing, documentation, and code review. You'll need strong judgment to discern useful AI suggestions.

What You'll Own

As a Senior Developer on One45, you will navigate a complex platform and contribute to its future. This is not an architecture or people management role; you will remain close to the code, writing, reviewing, investigating, and participating in technical decisions.

The role emphasizes judgment due to the system's maturity and the evolving use of AI. You will own complex technical decisions, guiding the team through ambiguity, balancing trade-offs, and confidently advancing important work.

Your responsibilities will likely include:

• Leading larger modernization initiatives across the platform.
• Strategizing how new work integrates with existing, complex systems.
• Reviewing code and providing thoughtful feedback to advance projects.
• Improving testing, reliability, and engineering practices.
• Mentoring junior developers.
• Contributing to architectural decisions while staying close to implementation.
• Shaping the evolution of modernization efforts and engineering practices.

Beyond technical depth, we seek high ownership. You'll clarify ambiguity, connect work across teams, identify risks, and drive initiatives without extensive direction. Strong Senior Developers at Acuity create momentum, build alignment, surface trade-offs, and accelerate others through collaboration and sound judgment.

The small team size offers significant visibility into technical and product decisions, with meaningful influence over the platform's evolution.

What We're Looking For

You'll likely enjoy this role if you:

• Understand systems: Comfortable with existing codebases, building context, and improving without immediate rebuilding.
• Think in trade-offs: Balance technical quality, business needs, and system realities serving real users.
• Embrace complexity: Recognize that real-world systems accumulate history and constraints.
• Work across the stack: Have a backend lean, caring about data flow, service interaction, and production issues.
• Prioritize testing and quality: See them as integral to the development process.
• Use AI in your work: Familiar with tools like Claude, Copilot, and Codex, and possess the judgment to critically evaluate their output.
• Take ownership: Ask questions, surface concerns, contribute ideas, and drive outcomes.

Support Expectations

This role involves ownership of production systems, including occasional on-call responsibilities. One45 supports critical workflows for medical schools, so incident response is part of the job, though incidents are uncommon.

You'll participate in shared support, including deployments, incident response, and coverage during key client periods. The engineering team also maintains limited coverage during the company's two-week December closure.

How We Support You

• Transparent compensation: Starting salary for Senior roles is $160,000 - $180,000 CAD, reflecting experience, scope, market alignment, and internal equity.
• Learning budget: A $3,000 annual budget for professional development.
• Shared success: Access to employee stock options.
• Remote-first work: Fully remote within Canada, with up to six weeks per year to work internationally.
• Time off: Self-directed vacation (4–6 weeks annually), monthly Acuity Days (collective Friday off), plus a two-week company-wide December closure.
• Comprehensive care: Health benefits from day one for you and your dependents.
• Future-focused support: A 2% GRSP matching program.
• Support for growing families: A 16-week parental leave top-up beyond EI.

What Happens After You Apply

Every application is carefully reviewed by a real person; AI is not used for evaluation, though automated screening for baseline requirements (e.g., Canadian residency) may occur. AI may assist with note-taking during interviews, but all decisions are human-made.

Our interviews are two-way conversations to understand your career, abilities, and goals, and to help you assess if the opportunity is a good fit.

Steps in the Process

The hiring process typically takes 2–4 weeks.

1. Application Review: A real person assesses your fit.
2. Intro Conversation: With a Talent team member to discuss your career, goals, and learn about Acuity Insights and the One45 team.
3. Hiring Manager Conversation: Focus on your experience, technical background, and past challenges.
4. Technical Deep Dive & Pair Programming: A collaborative session on engineering problems, including a pair programming exercise in an AI-enabled environment.
5. Team Conversations: 1:1 meetings with Product and Engineering partners.
6. Decision: Made by the hiring manager within 2–4 business days.
7. Offer & Reference Checks: Pending a digital reference check.

Life at Acuity Insights

We are a remote-first team of 135+ people, committed to a culture of trust, flexibility, and a sustainable pace. Acuity Insights has been recognized as one of Canada’s Top Small & Medium Employers for two consecutive years.

Our collaborative environment features:

• High trust and autonomy.
• Thoughtful, async-friendly communication.
• Balance of deep work and intentional connection.
• A culture of care, curiosity, and shared purpose.

We aim to maintain this balance, fostering an environment where people can do their best work and grow.

About Acuity Insights

Acuity Insights develops products that help higher education institutions make informed decisions about individuals, from admissions to development. Our philosophy is that potential can be understood and developed beyond just grades.

Our Casper situational judgment test (SJT), developed at McMaster University, has been completed by over 1 million applicants and is a widely used open-response SJT in higher education, backed by nearly 20 years of research.

We are evolving our products to connect assessment, insight, and development, supporting potential growth. We are building a connected ecosystem across assessment, education, and learner development, creating cohesive experiences for institutions and learners.