About P&P; OpticaP&P; Optica (PPO) is using brand new technology to transform an old industry that affects everyone on the planet: the food industry. We apply a complex and highly sophisticated mix of hardware, software and huge datasets to improve both the safety and quality of the food we eat.
PPO is on a mission to become the world's leading food information company. We are moving beyond simple detection to provide real-time, actionable insights that help food processors optimize yield, reduce waste, and ensure safety at a global scale.
We’re a truly diverse team in every sense of the word, and our team is incredibly smart. Our culture is respectful and caring. PPO is a well-funded, scaling company with opportunities for growth opportunities in every part of the organization.
If you’re looking for an opportunity to tackle challenging problems that affect everyone on the planet, PPO is the place for you.
LocationThis role is a hybrid role, where you’ll work primarily from PPO’s office in Waterloo Ontario.
CompensationThe salary range for this role is $80,000
- $110,000 CAD annually. The final offer will be determined based on a combination of factors, including:
- Relevant skills and

experience:
We assess each candidate's background, achievements, and demonstrated capabilities.
- Internal equity: We strive to maintain consistency and fairness across roles within our organization, aligning compensation with existing team members in comparable roles.
We are committed to transparency and fairness in our hiring process and welcome conversations about compensation throughout the recruitment process.
What You’ll Get To DoThis posting is for a current vacancy within our software team.
If you love variety, get bored doing the same thing every day, and want to grow fast
- this role was written for you.




We are looking for a Software Developer to join a small, high-performing engineering team at PPO. No two days look the same here. You might be writing embedded software that runs on the rackmount image-processing servers inside our meat processing instruments in the morning, digging into a backend cloud issue in the afternoon, and shipping a UI improvement to our PPO Insights web app before the end of the week. This is a genuinely full-stack, full-breadth role that will challenge you across the entire software stack.
You will be mentored directly by some of the most experienced and talented developers on the team
- engineers who have deep expertise across hardware-integrated software, machine learning systems, and cloud infrastructure. This is a rare opportunity to learn from people who have built and shipped complex, real-world systems, and who are genuinely invested in your growth.
We value skill and enthusiasm over a specific number of years. We welcome applications from new graduates with substantial co-op or internship experience, as well as seasoned developers with 3+ years of professional experience.
In this role, you will work on:Smart Imaging Systems
- Develop and maintain software deployed on embedded servers that form the computational core of PPO’s meat processing instruments
- Improve our real-time software pipeline that interfaces between the hardware and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms.



You’ll see the process end to end, starting with raw images from the cameras and ending with reject commands sent to a PLC to physically reject contaminates from food.
- Work alongside the hardware and optics teams, gaining exposure to how software integrates with hyperspectral imaging components and industrial automation tooling
- Assist the production team with configuring, validating, and commissioning new servers.
- Must have Linux experience, including general administration, maintenance, and scripting.
- Contribute to software versioning, deployment pipelines, and update processes across field-deployed instrumentsML Infrastructure & Data Pipeline & Annotation Tooling
- Build and maintain the full-stack software infrastructure for our end-to-end ML lifecycle, from managing raw image data and annotation tooling to supporting model training, deployment, and real-time inference on the PPO InstrumentBackend Infrastructure & Cloud
- Contribute to the development and maintenance of PPO’s backend services running on AWS
- Help improve CI/CD pipelines and deployment processes that support reliable, frequent software releases
- Assist with monitoring, alerting, and incident response to maintain system uptime and performanceWeb Application & User Experience (PPO Insights)
- Build new features and improvements for PPO Insights, the web application customers use to monitor instrument performance, review detection events, and share quality data with their downstream partners
- Write clean, well-tested code and participate in code reviews to maintain quality across the codebase
- Help improve the user experience of the application, ensuring it is intuitive and valuable for plant operators and quality teams.
Customer Success & Support
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📌 Software Developer (Ottawa)
🏢 P&P Optica
📍 Ottawa