Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

Job description

## ⚡About Amber Amber is an entirely new way to buy and sell power, designed for a world powered by renewable energy. We give customers direct access to the real-time **wholesale electricity price as it varies every 5 mins and the technology to shift more of their energy usage to the times when cheaper renewables are available in the grid.** It’s a cheaper way to buy power, a smarter way to sell power, and the fastest way for Australia to reach 100% renewable energy. We are a clear category leader in Australia for home battery automation and are growing rapidly **(over 80k customers)**. We have also **recently expanded into licensing our core technology** to utilities overseas, including a **partnership with E.ON Next in the UK**. **Amber is backed by top Australian and international investors** including Square Peg, Main Sequence, Breakthrough Victoria, Commonwealth Bank, NRMA, Gentrack, ETF Partners (UK/Europe based), and E.ON Next. We are **scaling rapidly** and **you’d be joining a team of over 200** committed to **building a diverse, inclusive, and purpose-driven culture** as we transform a major industry. **Our products are reshaping home energy: Amber for Batteries** cuts bills by exporting stored energy at wholesale prices of up to $20/kWh, and **Amber for EVs** enables the cheapest, cleanest charging. **In 2026**, we will push this even further with our new **vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology**. ## 💻 About the role We're looking for a **Chief Technology Officer** to lead technology at Amber, **reporting to our co-founder and Co-CEO Chris Thompson** and joining the executive team. **Our founding CTO built Amber's technology function over seven years and moves on later this year**. What started with an MVP built by a couple of engineers is now a global platform supported by a team of around 80 with even more growth to come. The technology you'd own controls physical assets in tens of thousands of homes and bids them into the National Electricity Market every five minutes. Get a forecast wrong and customers feel it on their bill. It runs in two places: our own retailer in Australia, where we push it hardest, and inside the utility partners overseas who license it. Making one platform serve both properly is the central architectural problem of the next few years. ### 🫀 Why we think this is one of the best technology jobs in the country - **Climate impact you can count.** Not a pledge or an offset. Actual megawatt-hours shifted away from coal, every single day. - **Proven value.** You're not being asked to find product-market fit. You're being asked to take something that demonstrably works and make it work everywhere. - **It's a genuine export story.** Australian energy technology running inside European utilities, with more markets to come. - **The engineering org already works.** ~80 people, a strong Director of Engineering, and practices we're proud of. Your job is to make it better, not to rebuild it. - **A real executive seat.** Board and investor exposure, partner utilities, regulators, and a say in plenty of decisions that have nothing to do with engineering. - **A proper handover.** We're aiming to overlap you with our outgoing CTO, so you inherit context rather than archaeology. ### 👉🏽 What you'd own 1. **Technology vision and architecture**, for our Australian business and for the platform we license to utilities overseas 2. **The engineering organisation.** Structure, hiring, capability, performance, and how people work 3. **How we build with AI.** We're partway through changing how engineering works here, and we want a CTO with a real point of view on where that goes next 4. **Engineering delivery**, including the honest conversation when speed, quality and predictability trade off against each other 5. **Information security for the whole company**, and compliance wherever it lands on technology 6. **Technology spend**, vendors, and the build versus buy calls 7. **Representing our technology** to the board, investors, partner utilities and regulators **You'd have two direct reports: our Director of Engineering, who leads an engineering group of 88, and our IT function.** ### 🎯 What we're looking for - **You've held the top technical seat.** You've been the first, second or at most third most senior technical person in an engineering and product group of 50 to 200 people. You've seen our current size, and ideally a bit past it. - **You're still technically current.** You were an IC recently enough that it hasn't worn off, and you can read a design doc and ask the question that actually matters. - **You've got range, and you've stayed long enough to live with your own decisions.** We'd rather see a few companies than one, with enough time in each that you had to own the consequences of what you built. - **You've worked somewhere good.** However you want to define good: engineering reputation, commercial outcome, or a brand people know. - **You're further along on AI than most.** Nobody has this one finished. But we want someone who is already working through the change - technically and culturally - **You build capability, not dependency.** You set direction clearly enough that good decisions get made when you're not in the room. You don't need an energy background. It helps. You will need to get properly curious about the market fast, because here the market is the product. ### 🎉 Benefits - We're committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace and a great culture of people who love coming to work to build a better world. - You'd be a part of a rapidly growing team of over 200 with expertise across energy, technology, marketing, and operations. - Be part of a growing technology company that will shape the future of household and grid energy use. - Enjoy a lively, collaborative workspace at our buzzing Melbourne CBD headquarters in the heart of the city. - Flexible working hours with provision for regular work from home arrangements. - Equitable gender-neutral parental leave policies. - An external Employee Assistance Plan (EAP) for mental health support. - Competitive salary and share options in Amber. - Annual Learning & Development budget to support your personal growth. - Additional PTO between Xmas & New Year.