Wenco International Mining Systems (www.wencomine.com), a subsidiary of Hitachi Construction Machinery (HCM), provides industry leading, innovative technologies to customers in the mining and material movement sectors, enabling sustainable and safe operations.
The Role
Wenco’s Fleet Management System is a real-time, mission-critical application that has supported global mining operations for decades. The codebase reflects that history. It’s deep, complex, and not something you can shortcut your way through.
We are hiring a Tech Lead who will be the strongest technical executor on the team. This is a hands-on, code-every-day role, not a strategy or management position. Technical direction and coaching are supported by your manager where your primary job is to understand a large legacy C++ system deeply enough to make sound decisions about what to extract, what to refactor, and what to leave alone, and then execute on those decisions.
You will be the first hire in a new development team. You’ll have the full backing of a strong, battle-tested engineering team, but you’re here to shape how this team operates from day one. The standard you set in your work becomes the team’s baseline. You will be expected to drive the technical direction of these changes, and to demonstrate the capability to do so. As you build system knowledge and trust, you’ll grow into mentoring the team and shaping the engineering culture around you.
Work on industry-leading products that deliver tangible value to our customers. Enjoy our optional 9/80 work schedule. Receive a competitive base salary, profit sharing program, and RRSP matching.
Who You Are
You balance boldness with discipline. You have the confidence to make significant changes to a live, mission-critical system, and the rigor to ensure those changes are safe.
You have good judgment. You know when to take the hard road and do things properly, and when the pragmatic shortcut is the right call. You don’t default to either.
You don’t wait to be asked. You find what’s broken, form a clear view on how to fix it, and follow through until it’s done.
You have grit. This codebase will fight you. You don’t quit when the problem is ugly.
What You’ll Do
- Go deep into the legacy C++ codebase. Understand it well enough to make responsible extraction and refactoring decisions, not risky rewrites.
- Lead hands-on modernization, transforming the mission-critical monolith into a loosely coupled, scalable, and resilient architecture.
- Set the engineering standard through your code, your reviews, and your technical decisions. Your standard becomes the team's baseline.
- Participate in root cause analysis for production issues. Propose systemic fixes, not band-aids.
- Leverage AI tooling for codebase analysis, scaffolding, bridging legacy and modern systems, and low risk refactors. You won’t be doing this alone. AI is a core part of how we attack this problem.
- Help build the team culture from the ground up. You’re not managing people, but the way you work sets the tone.
Why This Role
This is a genuinely hard modernization problem. A decades-old, real-time C++ system running mission-critical mining operations. You can’t just rewrite it, and AI isn’t going to solve it for you. Your deep technical skills matter here.
But you won’t be falling behind on AI adoption either. You’ll use AI heavily: as tooling, for analysis, for scaffolding, for accelerating the work. The combination of hard technical problems and modern AI tooling is rare.
You’ll be the strongest technical player on the team with real ownership over the work. No committees, no design-by-consensus. You’ll get hands-on with modern stacks (AWS, Kubernetes, Terraform) as you extract and modernize. This isn’t just maintaining legacy code. As you extract functionality from the monolith, you’ll be building new applications from scratch on modern tech stacks.
This work has strong backing from the business. You won’t be fighting for buy-in or justifying why modernization matters. The organization is committed to this, and you’ll have the support to execute.
This isn’t a quick-fix engagement. Modernizing a system like this takes years, not months. If you’re looking for something to sink your teeth into, a problem with real depth that rewards persistence, this is it.
Required Skills
- Experience: 5+ years in production environments with complex, high-uptime systems. 10+ years preferred.
- C++ (strong preference): You need to be able to navigate and make decisions in a large, mature C++ codebase. This is where hard work lives.
- C# (desirable): Our stack includes both. Depth here is valuable but not critical.
- SQL & databases: Solid experience working with relational databases.
- Modernization track record: You’ve extracted, migrated, or re-architected legacy systems before. You know the traps.
- AI enthusiasm: Not a skills requirement, but you should be genuinely interested in leveraging AI tooling. We use it heavily and we don’t want to drag anyone into it.
Communication
- Clear technical communication and documentation
- Can present to engineers and non-technical stakeholders alike
- Direct and constructive. Pushes back with a better idea, not just objections.
Nice to Have
- Linux development experience
- Experience with fleet management, mining, or industrial systems
- Contributions to internal platforms or open source
Education & Eligibility
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent experience
- Eligible to work in Canada
Base salary of $155,000 - $180,000, commensurate with experience and qualifications.
Wenco advances the efficiency and safety of the world’s surface mining equipment through our fleet management systems. We are committed to providing a stable yet exciting work place environment for individual employees to build and grow their career with the Company.
Wenco is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
Disclaimer
The information in this description has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work performed by employees. It is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities, and qualifications required of employees assigned to this job. It is not intended as an employment contract. Job descriptions are subject to change, which may not necessarily affect compensation.
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As our team experiences high volumes of applications, only shortlisted candidates will be contacted. To be considered, please ensure a resume is attached.
