Wave HQ Tech Stack

Financial operations platform for small business accounting, payroll, and payments

Software Development Toronto, Ontario 201–500 employees Privately Held

Wave builds accounting, payroll, and payments software for small business owners. The tech stack reveals a data-forward architecture: Python + JavaScript on the frontend, Kafka + Debezium for event streaming, and Redshift for analytics — with an active shift toward Databricks and away from dbt, suggesting a migration from SQL-based transformations to a more unified data platform. Current projects cluster heavily around compliance automation, payroll scaling, and platform reliability, while pain points center on modernizing legacy data infrastructure and managing system complexity as the product expands.

Tech Stack 26 technologies

Core StackPython JavaScript React Ruby Datadog PagerDuty Kafka Django gRPC Docker Kubernetes AWS GraphQL Braze Looker Google Analytics React Native Terraform Debezium Hudi Amazon Redshift Git AWS SQS Protocol Buffers

AdoptingDatabricks

Replacingdbt

What Wave HQ Is Building

◆Challenges

Scaling payroll systems
Enhancing risk prevention strategies
Performance risks
Modernizing legacy data infrastructure
Compliance challenges
Transitioning to cloud analytics
Scaling systems and processes
Security, scalability, reliability, performance
Reducing redundant technical patterns
Standardizing shared components

▲Active Projects

New features for the accounting team
Payroll onboarding experience
Payments
Lifecycle journeys and product education experiences
Enablement materials for customer-facing and support teams
Compliance enhancements
Platform scalability
Go-to-market strategy for new products and features
Compliance automation
Reliability improvement initiative

Hiring Activity

Accelerating15 roles · 10 in 30d

Department

Engineering

Marketing

Product

Data

Finance

Ops

Seniority

Senior

Junior

Manager

Mid

Director

Principal

Staff

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About Wave HQ

Wave is a privately held fintech company based in Toronto, Ontario, serving small business owners with cloud-based accounting, payroll, invoicing, and payments software. The platform handles core financial operations for SMBs: automated invoicing and receipt capture, payroll processing, and payment handling. The company operates with 201–500 employees and is currently hiring across engineering, marketing, and product roles, with accelerating hiring velocity concentrated in Canada. Active development focuses on new accounting features, payroll onboarding flows, lifecycle-driven product education, compliance automation, and platform scalability — areas that directly impact SMB operational efficiency.

HeadquartersToronto, Ontario

Company Size201–500 employees

Hiring MarketsCanada

Frequently Asked Questions

What tech stack does Wave use?

Wave runs Python, JavaScript, and React on the frontend; Kafka and Debezium for event streaming; Redshift for analytics; Django and GraphQL for backend services; Kubernetes and Docker for orchestration; and Datadog for observability. The company is currently adopting Databricks and moving away from dbt.

What is Wave HQ working on?

Active projects include payroll onboarding and scaling, compliance automation and enhancements, new accounting features, payment system improvements, platform scalability and reliability, and lifecycle-driven customer education experiences.