Head of Engineering

Location: Melbourne
Discipline: Development
Job type: Permanent
Salary: $250000 to $350000
Contact name: Elsa Sudan
Contact email: elsa.s@interpropeople.com
Job ref: 903796
Published: 2 days ago
Head of Engineering

Overview:
My client is a successful scale-up seeking a dynamic Head of Engineering to lead our engineering team through a period of rapid growth. The ideal candidate will have a proven track record in scaling platforms and teams, coupled with deep expertise in distributed systems architecture. You will work closely with our UK-based CTO, manage a growing team, and ensure platform stability and scalability as the business continues to expand globally.

Key Responsibilities:
Scaling Platforms and Teams:
  • Lead the scaling of platforms and engineering teams during rapid growth, managing increasing complexity and ensuring platform stability as the user base and workload expand.
  • Recruit, develop, and lead engineering teams across diverse geographical locations, including Australia, India, Sri Lanka, and beyond.
  • Foster a high-performance engineering culture, driving team development and managing performance across multiple regions.
Distributed Systems Architecture:
  • Design and implement distributed systems that handle large-scale data and high availability.
  • Architect microservices solutions, data partitioning, service orchestration, and event-driven architectures.
  • Ensure system scalability and reliability, with a focus on performance tuning, load balancing, and fault tolerance. Familiarity with technologies like Kubernetes, Docker, Azure, and cloud-native solutions is essential.
  • Manage asynchronous communication and data processing through message brokers such as Azure Service Bus, Kafka, and RabbitMQ.
Outcome and Impact-Focused Leadership:
  • Drive strategies to enhance developer productivity and efficiency through optimized workflows, automation, and streamlined CI/CD pipelines.
  • Enforce best practices in code quality, testing, and release management. Lead initiatives that improve software quality metrics and team performance.
  • Define and track key performance indicators (KPIs) for the engineering teams, aligning them with business goals, and continuously drive improvements based on insights.
Required Experience:
  • Proven experience in both scale-ups and larger organizations. You understand the nuances of working within a scale-up, driving rapid growth, while also bringing experience from larger, more structured environments.
  • Extensive experience in scaling engineering teams and platforms during periods of significant growth, managing teams across global locations (Australia, India, Sri Lanka, etc.).
  • Strong background in distributed systems architecture, including microservices, event-driven systems, and cloud-native technologies (Azure, Kubernetes, Docker).
  • Track record of ensuring system scalability, reliability, and performance, including expertise in fault tolerance, performance tuning, and load balancing.
  • Experience working across global time zones, specifically with UK and US stakeholders, and flexibility to engage in evening calls due to global operations.
  • Ability to implement productivity-enhancing tools and strategies, improve software quality, and deliver key outcomes that align with business goals.
Ideal Candidate Profile:
  • 10+ years of engineering leadership experience, including scaling platforms and teams.
  • Strong understanding of both scale-up dynamics and the processes of larger organizations.
  • Expertise in recruiting, developing, and leading diverse teams across global locations.
  • Deep technical knowledge of distributed systems, microservices, and cloud-native architectures.
  • Experience working with global stakeholders, including evening meetings with UK/US teams.
  • Strong focus on outcomes and delivering impact by improving developer productivity, enforcing best practices, and driving measurable improvements across the engineering organization.
Why Join Them?
  • Opportunity to lead during a pivotal stage of growth, with significant influence over the future direction of the engineering team and platform.
  • Work in a high-growth environment with a global focus, engaging with teams across Australia, UK, US, and beyond.
  • Competitive compensation package with a clear path for future growth and impact.
This role is ideal for a senior engineering leader looking to make a significant impact in a high-growth environment, while managing and scaling a world-class engineering team.