Senior Manager of Engineering

Role Overview

Lead and elevate a New Zealand engineering hub, accelerating delivery performance and strengthening engineering standards across a mature, globally distributed platform.

This role leads and develops a team of approximately 12 engineers across New Zealand and other geographies. The architecture and platform foundations are well established. Your mandate is to increase output, raise the performance bar, and systematically remove impediments so the team consistently delivers meaningful customer value at higher velocity.

Reporting to the Head of Product & Engineering, you will translate strategic priorities into disciplined execution and measurable outcomes, while partnering closely with a peer engineering leader in Europe and Product teams across New Zealand and Europe.

This is a leadership role for someone who builds strong teams, sets high standards, and creates sustained delivery momentum without compromising engineering fundamentals.

Why This Role

• Lead and elevate an established, high-calibre engineering team.

• Drive measurable improvements in cycle time and roadmap throughput.

• Embed AI-assisted engineering workflows to raise productivity and quality.

• Strengthen delivery discipline, accountability, and performance standards.

• Influence technical direction in partnership with European counterparts.

• Contribute to a profitable, self-funded, privacy-first global product.

What You Will Own

Build & Lead a High-Performance Team

• Lead and develop a distributed team of approximately 12 engineers across New Zealand and other geographies.

• Establish clear delivery standards, accountability, and performance expectations.

• Raise the performance bar while maintaining a sustainable, high-trust culture.

• Manage performance directly and constructively where expectations are not met.

• Support moderate hiring to strengthen capability where needed.

Drive Roadmap Throughput & Execution Excellence

• Translate strategic priorities into clear, executable plans.

• Drive complex, multi-stream initiatives from alignment through to shipped value.

• Increase roadmap throughput and reduce cycle time from idea to release.

• Systematically identify delivery impediments and lead initiatives to remove them.

• Strengthen predictability, focus, and incremental shipping practices.

AI as a Performance Multiplier

• Embed AI-assisted development workflows to materially improve productivity, code quality, and speed of delivery.

• Establish clear standards for AI usage aligned with security and privacy expectations.

• Ensure AI adoption translates into measurable cycle time reduction and engineering leverage.

Platform Quality, Reliability & Security

• Strengthen infrastructure scalability, reliability, and cost efficiency.

• Embed enterprise-grade security and privacy-by-design practices.

• Improve operational maturity to support sustained global growth.

Cross-Regional Engineering Leadership

• Partner closely with a peer engineering leader in Europe to coordinate ownership boundaries, technical alignment, and delivery sequencing.

• Build strong working relationships with Product leadership in New Zealand and Europe.

• Influence technical standards and strategic direction beyond your direct team.

• Contribute to engineering-wide improvements across the broader organisation.

What Success Looks Like in Year One

• Increased roadmap throughput with measurable reduction in cycle time.

• Clear, disciplined adoption of AI-assisted workflows across the team.

• Strong performance culture with clear accountability and high engagement.

• Improved predictability and delivery discipline.

• Productive, high-trust partnership with European engineering leadership.

• Tangible improvements in reliability, security, and operational maturity.

What You Bring

• 5+ years managing senior engineers and/or engineering team leads.

• 8+ years overall engineering leadership experience.

• Significant experience leading engineering teams in SaaS or product-led environments.

• Demonstrated ability to improve throughput, quality, and operational maturity with measurable outcomes.

• Strong grounding in software architecture, infrastructure, and modern delivery practices.

• Experience influencing technical direction beyond direct reporting lines.

• Proven experience leading distributed or remote teams across time zones.

• Confidence managing performance directly, constructively, and fairly.

• Competitive mindset balanced with integrity and long-term thinking.

Strong Signals

• Practical experience embedding AI-assisted development into engineering workflows.

• Experience improving performance in established engineering environments.

• History of mentoring senior engineers and influencing engineering standards across teams.

• Experience collaborating across regions in globally distributed organisations.

• Proven ability to build a culture of end-to-end technical ownership, embedding observability, monitoring, and usage insight into everyday engineering practice.

Compensation & Benefits

• Competitive salary.

• Permanent, full-time employment.

• 100% remote role (must be based in New Zealand).

• Flexible working hours.

• Home office equipment provided.

• 25 days annual leave plus public holidays.

• Private health insurance.

• Professional development support.

• Volunteering leave.

• Compassionate leave (including pet loss).

• Inclusive, remote-first culture and great work culture.

Location

100% remote – New Zealand.

Some cross-timezone work required.

Hiring Process

• Recruiter screening.

• Online aptitude test (approx. 1 hour).

• 1st interview (approx. 1 hour).

• Take home project (up to 4 hours).

• Final interview (approx. 1.5 hours).

Career Trajectory

Engineering uses a structured career development framework, allowing you to co-design your next career steps to achieve organisational and individual benefit, and plan the required development opportunities and support.

Diversity & Inclusion

Committed to building an inclusive workplace and welcoming applicants from all backgrounds. Diverse perspectives strengthen teams and improve the products we build.