Engineering Lead

An exciting opportunity has opened with a fast-growing Australian omnichannel retailer that is investing heavily in its digital, store and AI-enabled technology ecosystem.

This is a senior technical leadership role for someone who wants genuine ownership, not just of a roadmap, but of the platforms, architecture, reliability and technical decisions that directly influence customer experience and commercial performance.

The business operates across ecommerce, mobile, physical retail and internal AI platforms. The digital and store environments are deeply connected through a shared API and commerce backbone, meaning every architectural decision has a direct impact on revenue, customer experience and operational performance.

You will lead a small, highly capable engineering team and act as the senior technical authority across the full platform.

You will be hands-on, close to the systems, and accountable for the bigger picture.

You will own and guide a modern retail technology environment spanning:

• A high-traffic ecommerce storefront built with Next.js, React and TypeScript
• A customer-facing React Native mobile app
• A Laravel / PHP API layer running in a serverless cloud environment
• A customised commerce and checkout layer
• Store technology and POS integrations
• An internal AI platform connecting business data, forecasting, customer insights and operational tools
• Monitoring, incident response and platform reliability across revenue-generating systems

The business already has strong engineers across the stack. What they need now is someone who can connect the dots: technical leadership, platform ownership, decision-making, commercial context, and calm accountability when things matter.

What you’ll be doing

You will lead a small team of engineers, setting priorities, supporting delivery, running 1:1s, managing performance and creating an environment where experienced engineers can do their best work.

You will stay hands-on across architecture and development, contributing where needed across frontend, backend, mobile, API and AI platform work.

You will take ownership of platform stability, monitoring and incident response, ensuring the right signals, dashboards and alerts are in place before customers are impacted.

You will help evolve a genuinely advanced internal AI platform, including LLM tooling, business-data integrations, forecasting, semantic search and internal productivity use cases.

You will work closely with ecommerce, product, marketing, operations and senior leadership teams to evaluate new tools, vendors and platform decisions.

You will translate technical decisions into commercial outcomes and present recommendations clearly to senior stakeholders, including board-level audiences.

You do not need to be an expert in every technology in the stack, but you should be comfortable working across a broad modern engineering environment.

You will likely bring:

• Strong software engineering background across modern web, API and cloud platforms
• Experience leading engineers in a small, high-trust team
• Broad technical fluency across JavaScript / TypeScript, React, Next.js, React Native, PHP / Laravel, Python, AWS, Terraform and Kubernetes
• Strong understanding of ecommerce, omnichannel retail, customer-facing platforms or high-availability digital products
• Practical experience with monitoring, incident response, reliability and production operations
• Curiosity and confidence around AI-assisted development, LLM tooling, automation or internal AI platforms
• Ability to evaluate vendors and platforms through a commercial and technical lens
• Clear communication style with the ability to influence both engineers and non-technical stakeholders

Tech environment The current environment includes:

Frontend: Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind, Apollo, Algolia, Contentful

Mobile: React Native, Redux Toolkit, Apollo Client

Backend: Laravel / PHP, serverless cloud architecture, PHPUnit

Commerce: customised commerce platform, checkout, catalogue and POS integrations

AI / Data: AWS ECS/Fargate, Terraform, Python, LLM tooling, internal AI assistants, forecasting models, customer insight tools

Monitoring / DevOps: Grafana, Sentry, Kubernetes logs, CI/CD pipelines, Terraform Cloud

This is a rare opportunity to join a growing Australian retail business where technology is not a back-office function. The engineering platform is central to growth, customer experience, store operations and future competitive advantage.

You will inherit a well-built technology environment, a capable team, strong documentation and a business that genuinely values AI-enabled engineering.

The role offers:

• Broad technical ownership across web, app, API, commerce, stores and AI
• Direct influence on platform and vendor decisions
• Board-level visibility
• A small, senior engineering team rather than a large bureaucracy
• A business that is actively investing in AI-assisted development and internal tooling
• Remote-friendly flexibility, with the business headquartered in Melbourne

Experience in ecommerce, marketplace, retail or consumer platforms required due to the brands aggressive growth plans.