Software Developer - Toronto - Willful

Description

About Willful

Willful is dedicated to helping every Canadian have a comprehensive end-of-life plan to reduce the burden on families. We make creating a will and other estate planning documents accessible, affordable, and easy, using technology and empathy to simplify the process. Since launching in 2017, we've helped more than 350,000 Canadian families gain peace of mind through our digital estate planning products.

We have built a respected brand and have been featured in top-tier publications such as The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star. We've partnered with top-tier brands and even struck a deal on Dragons' Den. Transforming estate planning into an accessible, convenient, and affordable option drives us daily. We're hiring an additional software developer to further our mission.

About the role

We are looking for a full-stack developer who loves building scalable web applications and writing clean, maintainable code. You'll be an integral part of a small, collaborative team, contributing to projects across the stack while learning from experienced engineers and contributing to meaningful improvements in our platform.

This is a vacant role, ideal for someone who enjoys solving real-world problems, working on a customer-focused product, and being hands-on in a fast-moving environment.

What you'll do

• Design and refine architecture for our applications and systems to ensure scalability, maintainability, and security.
• Build and maintain features across our platform, including backend services and web interfaces
• Contribute to ongoing improvements in code quality, testing, performance, and maintainability
• Participate in code reviews, pair programming, and team discussions to help grow your skills and support your teammates
• Learn and apply best practices in architecture, testing, and deployment workflows
• Solve complex technical problems, including performance optimization, infrastructure reliability, and code scalability.
• Own key components of our codebase, contributing high-quality, well-tested code.
• Evaluate and introduce new technologies or frameworks as needed to improve efficiency and stability.
• Work closely with other engineers and the technical lead to plan and execute technical projects.
• Ensure best practices for testing, monitoring, code quality, and CI/CD pipelines.

Required Skills and Experience

• Experienced software engineer with extensive expertise in backend and full-stack development.
• Proven track record of designing scalable, maintainable architectures for web applications.
• Expertise with backend frameworks and languages (Ruby on Rails experience is a strong plus).
• Solid frontend understanding (React experience is a plus).
• Deep experience with RESTful API design and development.
• Strong database skills, including schema design, performance tuning, and optimization.
• Passion for solving complex technical challenges.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills.

Nice to have

• Experience working with Heroku or similar cloud platforms
• Exposure to performance optimization or debugging production issues
• Interest in generative AI tools or DevOps best practices
• Experience working in a small team or startup environment

Who you are

• Technical Expert: You're passionate about solving technical problems at a system level and thrive on digging into complex codebases.
• Architecture-Focused: You're driven by technical correctness and long-term maintainability, and you're comfortable making architecture trade-offs.
• Independent Contributor: You prefer deep technical work over people management or leadership roles.
• Pragmatic & Product-Aware: You balance technical excellence with practical product needs.
• Collaborative: You enjoy working with other technical experts and product-minded peers, and you communicate clearly and constructively.
• Detail-Oriented: You care about high-quality code, clean architecture, and robust systems.

We don't care where you went to school—or if you went to school. If you don't check every box, but you can show us a product you've successfully built in the past, apply.

We're building a diverse team

Willful is dedicated to fostering a workplace that values and celebrates diversity in all its forms. We believe in inclusion and are committed to creating a work environment that embraces individuals of diverse backgrounds, including race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, and disability. We are proud that over 50% of our team, and 50% of our Senior Leadership Team, are women; and over half of our team comes from diverse ethnic backgrounds.

Work where you want to

We're looking for the right developer to join our team, so this role isn't limited by geography and will be 100% remote. The only requirement is that you must be legally able to work in Canada and align with our team's core working hours. You will be required to attend one in-person company retreat per year.

When

March 2026 (flexible start date)

Why Willful?

• Competitive salary and participation in employee stock option plan. Anticipated salary range of $110,000–$140,000 (dependent on skills, experience, and qualifications)
• Sun Life benefits plan, including health, dental, and vision;
• Annual $500 wellness budget;
• Monthly meal and entertainment budget;
• Choice of $500 perk: a health spending account (HSA) or $500 annual RRSP; contribution through Wealthsimple for Employees;
• 4.5-day work week (every Friday afternoon off)
• Company-wide paid "recharge" days in December, in addition to vacation time
• Competitive policies, including parental leave and bereavement policy;
• Flexible work hours to accommodate both work and home life;
• Fun and inclusive virtual team events
• Annual team-wide retreat

Interviewing at Willful

All recruiting activities, including interviews and new hire onboarding, will be conducted virtually.

1. Phone Screen (30 minutes)
2. Experience Deep Dive (60 minutes)
3. Skill Assessment (15 minutes for Q&A, followed by 30 minutes to present your solution)
4. Culture Interview (30 minutes with members of our Engineering & Product team)
5. Offer

AI Disclosure Statement
Willful uses artificial intelligence tools for internal note-taking purposes only. These tools do not influence candidate screening, evaluation or hiring decisions and are used solely to support accurate documentation and efficient internal communication.