He qualifies only if the US role is primarily managerial or executive and he has one continuous year as an employee of the Canadian company in the last three years. A subsidiary with two installers, where the transferee will personally do most technical work, usually fails the first test.
Managerial capacity is measured by what fills the week
The regulation defines managerial capacity around supervising other supervisory, professional or managerial employees, or managing an essential function at a senior level, together with authority to hire and fire and discretion over daily operations. A first-line supervisor of non-professional staff does not qualify unless the employees supervised are professionals. In a small installation subsidiary the honest question is what the transferee will do on a Tuesday in March.
If the answer is managing schedules, negotiating with distributors, approving quotes, hiring a second crew and reviewing the subsidiary's financial results, the role is managerial and the number of subordinates matters less than the level of authority. If the answer is climbing into barn attics to commission controllers, the petition should wait until the subsidiary has the staff to support a manager, or should be reconsidered as an L-1B specialized-knowledge transfer if his knowledge of the company's control systems is genuinely proprietary. Trying to describe technical work as management is the most common reason these petitions are denied.