Engineering Manager

The candidate will have responsibilities across the following functions:

Team Leadership and People Management:

• Be accountable for the performance and results of the team; lead, mentor, and grow a team of Software Engineers and Senior Software Engineers, conducting regular 1:1s, performance reviews, and career development conversations.
• Foster a psychologically safe, inclusive, and high-performance engineering culture aligned with Applied's values.
• Actively recruit, hire, and onboard top engineering talent in partnership with People and Talent.
• Recognise individual strengths and match engineers to opportunities that accelerate their growth.
• Adapt team plans, sprint priorities, and resource allocation to address resource constraints, operational challenges, and shifting business requirements, with guidance from senior leadership.

Technical Delivery and Execution:

• Own end-to-end delivery of engineering commitments, ensuring the team ships releasable, high-quality software on schedule.
• Partner with Product Managers and Architects to refine requirements, scope epics, and prioritise the backlog.
• Remove blockers, manage dependencies, and maintain team velocity across sprint and release cycles.
• Ensure robust test automation, monitoring, and operational readiness for production and non-production environments.
• Drive debugging and resolution of application errors and performance issues with a sense of urgency and ownership.

Technical Strategy and Quality:

• Participate in and facilitate design reviews, architecture discussions, and code reviews to maintain standards and drive quality.
• Identify technical risks and opportunities early; escalate and communicate them transparently to stakeholders.
• Champion internal standards, principles-based design, and documentation practices across the team.
• Continuously evaluate new tools and technologies to improve developer productivity and product quality.
• Recommend changes to engineering practices, tooling policies, and sub-function procedures based on team learnings and operational feedback; present findings to senior leadership for review.

Cross-functional Collaboration:

• Serve as a primary engineering liaison for cross-team initiatives and stakeholder communications.
• Collaborate with peer Engineering Managers, Principal Engineers, and Architects across Applied's global technology organisation.
• Translate complex technical concepts clearly for non-technical audiences, including business stakeholders.

Requirements:

• 12+ years of software engineering experience, including at least 4 years in an engineering leadership or management role.
• Hands-on proficiency with our core tech stack: Python, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, TypeScript, and REST API frameworks.
• Demonstrated experience managing engineers through the full software development lifecycle: design, development, testing, release, and operations.
• Strong background in SaaS application development, cloud environments, and open-source tooling.
• Experience with test automation strategies and tools aligned with continuous delivery practices.

Leadership and Communication:

• Proven ability to lead with empathy while maintaining high standards for quality and accountability.
• Exceptional communication skills with the ability to distil complex technical problems for diverse audiences.
• Track record of facilitating constructive technical debates, aligning teams, and driving decisions forward.
• Ability to work effectively in a globally distributed, remote-first engineering organisation.
• Experience implementing and improving engineering processes, coding standards, and documentation practices.
• Ability to make decisions guided by policies, procedures, and business plans; escalate complex or high-impact matters to senior leadership for guidance and alignment.