Engineering Manager

About the Role

This senior people and technical leadership role sits within the Technology function and is accountable for leading, developing and supporting a group of engineers while providing strong technical guidance across supported teams and client engagements. The role combines people leadership and engineering leadership in roughly equal measure, covering capability development, organisational responsibilities, technical oversight and selective hands-on contribution. It operates beyond the boundaries of an individual project or client engagement, with people and organisational leadership as core and explicit responsibilities. The role acts as a senior technology representative across client engagements and the wider organisation.

Key Responsibilities

• Provide direct people leadership for an allocated group of engineers, including regular 1:1s, performance, development and career conversations, clear expectations, timely and constructive feedback, identification of strengths, development needs and progression opportunities
• And early constructive handling of performance or behavioural concerns.
• Build trust, engagement, accountability and psychological safety across the team, and support recruitment, onboarding and retention of high-quality engineering talent.
• Coach and mentor engineers across technical, professional and leadership development, develop greater autonomy, judgement and decision-making capability, identify and develop future technical and people leaders
• Create opportunities for engineers to broaden their experience and increase their organisational impact, and promote continuous learning, knowledge sharing and deliberate capability uplift.
• Provide strong technical leadership across the teams, products and client engagements they support, reinforcing the architecture, engineering standards, practices and technical direction established by the Head of Engineering.
• Participate in solution design, architecture discussions, technical reviews and major engineering decisions, challenge technical approaches where better solutions exist, and encourage thoughtful innovation.
• Identify technical risk, quality concerns and capability gaps early and ensure they are addressed, while ensuring engineering decisions balance immediate delivery needs with maintainability, scalability and long-term platform strategy.
• Model and reinforce a culture of engineering excellence, accountability, curiosity and continuous improvement
• Actively champion modern engineering practices, automation and AI-enabled ways of working
• Encourage teams to challenge existing approaches and continually improve how software is designed, developed and delivered
• And share learning and effective practices across teams rather than allowing capability to remain isolated within individual projects.
• Maintain sufficient proximity to client and product delivery to understand priorities, technical challenges and emerging risks, work closely with Delivery, Product and Engineering leadership to ensure teams have clear technical direction and are capable of meeting their commitments
• Represent Champion Data credibly in technical client conversations where required, elevate material technical, capability, people or delivery risks early, and ensure client delivery pressures do not undermine sustainable engineering practices or team wellbeing.
• Maintain strong contemporary engineering capability and remain sufficiently hands-on to provide credible technical leadership, contribute directly where it materially improves an outcome, unblocks a team, validates an approach or demonstrates a pattern

Required Experience & Qualifications

• 10+ years of professional software engineering experience, including significant experience in senior or technical leadership roles.
• Demonstrated experience directly leading, coaching and developing engineers.
• Strong track record of building effective, high-performing engineering teams.
• Deep understanding of modern software engineering, cloud platforms, distributed systems and scalable architectural patterns.
• Experience designing, reviewing and guiding complex technical solutions.
• Experience operating across multiple teams, products or client engagements.
• Demonstrated ability to balance people leadership, technical leadership and delivery priorities.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills across technical, commercial and non-technical audiences.
• Strong people leadership, coaching and performance management capability.
• Strong contemporary engineering and architectural capability.
• Ability to lead through influence, clarity and trust rather than becoming the technical bottleneck.
• Strong judgement and decision-making capability.
• Ability to identify and develop capability in others.
• Strong customer and stakeholder communication.
• Curiosity and enthusiasm for emerging technology and AI-enabled engineering.

Preferred Skills

• Experience working directly with customers and senior stakeholders.

Workplace

• Hybrid working environment; the team works globally.

Benefits & Perks

• Mindful Me Days: Four days per year dedicated to wellbeing.
• Flexible Working: The team works globally in a hybrid environment, which includes two weeks per year during which you can work remotely from anywhere worldwide.
• AUS Office: Access to a newly renovated office in Southbank, Melbourne.
• Our spaces: All offices have great end-of-journey facilities including showers, wellness/prayer room and games.
• Employee Assistance Programs: 24/7 access to financial support and counselling.
• Wellness Incentive: To help support your home office setup or contribute towards a wellness activity or service of your choosing.
• Get to the Game: Funds towards tickets for you and your family or friends to attend sporting events globally.
• Advance You Learning and Development: Annual budget to spend on learning and development activities plus Brain Block Time, which is time set aside monthly to learn or study.
• LinkedIn Learning: Access to an external learning platform, LinkedIn Learning.
• Social Events: Including an annual Family Day and Volunteer Day.
• Paid Parental Leave.