Job Description

At Loblaw Digital, we know that our customers expect the best from us. Whether that means building the best, most innovative online shopping experience, or designing an app that will impact the lives of people across the country, we're up for the challenge. From our office in Downtown Toronto, we've created leading eCommerce experiences in the online grocery shopping, beauty, pharmacy, and apparel spaces, and we're only just getting started.

Why is this role important?

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As a Staff Backend Developer at Loblaw Digital, you will serve as a strategic technical leader across core platform experiences within the Engage domain, including Gateway orchestration, Server-Driven UI (SDUI), and BFF (Backend for Frontend) architecture.

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You'll partner deeply with cross-functional teams spanning Mobile, Web, Design, Product, and Infrastructure to architect scalable APIs, power dynamic experiences, and enable composable feature delivery across banners like PC Express, Shoppers Drug Mart, and Joe Fresh. This is a critical leadership role that shapes the technical direction of shared infrastructure powering millions of customer interactions per day.

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What You'll Do:

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Technical Strategy & Architecture:

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Define and evolve the architecture of Gateway, OneBFF, and SDUI backend services to support multi-banner, multi-tenant delivery.

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Own and advocate for the long-term technical vision behind server-driven page composition and orchestration layers (e.g. layout resolver, view resolver).

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Lead and contribute to high-impact Technical Design Documents (TDDs) with clear tradeoffs, scaling patterns, and roadmap implications.

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Systems Design & Implementation:

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Build and optimize high-throughput backend services using Node.js, TypeScript, and Java/Kotlin, with integration to systems like Helios, Assetful, and upstream services.

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Implement caching, observability, and graceful degradation patterns across SDUI surfaces.

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Champion schema evolution strategies (e.g., GraphQL federation, REST layering, JSON layouts) for forward compatibility and resilience.

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Cross-Team Leadership & Collaboration:

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Partner with Frontend and Mobile Staff Developers to define the API contracts, SDUI component APIs, and backend composition rules.

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Guide vertical teams (PDP, Browse, Homepage) in integrating with shared BFF and SDUI systems, ensuring performance and developer experience.

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Represent Gateway and BFF concerns in domain-wide conversations around performance, experimentation, personalization, and SSR.

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Platform Enablement:

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Drive initiatives that improve developer productivity, such as API mocking frameworks, CI pipelines, and schema validators for SDUI layout payloads.

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Contribute to platform-wide observability (Snowplow, OTEL), error handling, and tracing efforts to support performance-led engineering.

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Shape reusability strategies and modularization efforts across backend repositories.

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Does This Sound Like You?

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8+ years of backend development experience with modern service-oriented architecture.

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Deep expertise in at least one backend language (Node.js/TypeScript preferred, Java/Kotlin acceptable).

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Proven experience designing composable APIs, orchestration layers, or middleware gateways.

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Experience leading backend architecture for dynamic frontend experiences (e.g., SDUI, layout-as-data, CMS-driven rendering).

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Strong knowledge of API contract design, caching, observability (OTEL, Datadog), and production hardening techniques.

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Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional projects and mentor other engineers.

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Comfort with ambiguity, excellent written communication, and a track record of delivering high-leverage platform work.

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Nice to Have:

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Experience with GraphQL, Next.js, React SSR, or Framer Motion is a plus.

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Familiarity with multi-banner / multi-tenant product platforms.

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Understanding of performance instrumentation, deep linking, and BFF unification strategies.

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Contributions to design systems, layout renderers, or SDUI SDKs.

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Gateway / Apigee / API Management

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Building or operating high-throughput API Gateways (internal or external-facing).

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Experience with Apigee Edge/X, Kong, Express Gateway, or custom Node.js middleware orchestration layers.

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Deep understanding of rate limiting, token forwarding, header injection, proxy chaining, and other common gateway patterns.

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Designing multi-tenant routing, fallback behaviours, and token introspection across a distributed gateway mesh.

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Server-Driven UI (SDUI)

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Designing or integrating with layout-as-data systems (e.g., JSON/DSL-based rendering strategies).

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Building or scaling layout resolver/view resolver services that power mobile/web SDUI clients.

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Experience working with CMS or backend-defined UI schemas, and coordinating dynamic rendering across surfaces.

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Familiarity with composition boundaries, component hydration, and dynamic navigation structures.

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Backend for Frontend (BFF)

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Leading development of BFFs that orchestrate multiple upstream services and expose clean APIs to the frontend/mobile.

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Proven success in reducing complexity through thoughtful contract design and caching strategies.

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Comfortable working with GraphQL, REST aggregation, and API versioning best practices.

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Supporting multi-surface delivery (web, native iOS/Android, kiosk/tablet) through adaptive response logic.

How You'll Succeed:

At Loblaw Digital, we seek great people to continually strengthen our culture. We believe great people model our values, are authentic, build trust and make connections.


We're able to keep innovating because our colleagues are passionate about their work and excited about the future of eCommerce.


If you have big ideas, undeniable enthusiasm, and thrive in a collaborative, creative, and diverse group, we'll get along just fine.


Looking for a challenge? Good. Love an innovative work environment? Even better.


Apply today.

Employment Type:

Full time

Type of Role:

Regular
Loblaw Digital recognizes Canada's diversity as a source of national pride and strength. We have made it a priority to reflect our nation's evolving diversity in the products we sell, the people we hire, and the culture we create in our organization. Accommodation is available upon request for applicants with disabilities in the recruitment and assessment process and when hired.


In addition, we believe that compliance with laws is about doing the right thing. Upholding the law is part of our Code of Conduct - it reinforces what our customers and stakeholders expect of us.


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