Director, Engineering

Job description

**Be Part of Our Next Chapter** For over almost 60 years, our solutions have enabled impactful connections between some of the world’s leading brands and their customers. And while we’ve already done a lot of work we’re proud of, we’re just getting started! We’re a global technology company focused on creating dynamic, smart, personalized and engaging customer experiences powered by our range of digital hardware, our proprietary content management system and our industry leading signage solutions. (For example: If you’ve ordered in-store or in the drive-thru at McDonald’s somewhere in the world in the last few years, chances are you’ve interacted with our digital solutions.) We work in over 50 global markets and have 9 offices around the world, with a global headquarters proudly located in our founding home of Sydney, Australia. Coates Group has the values of a family-owned business and the innovative spirit of a start-up, both which fuel our purpose – *Creating Connections. Empowering Partnerships. Always Evolving*. Through hard work, dedication and creativity, we’ve become industry leaders who have won awards and set records while remaining focused on continual growth and evolution. We are a 2x Australia Good Design Award winner and successfully completed the largest hardware deployment in Quick Service Restaurant history. We are curious, charismatic, authentic and we value and leverage the diversity of our crew. We are imaginers, kindness enthusiasts, experts, creators, thinkers, challengers, collaborators and over-achievers. And together, as a Crew, we are revolutionizing the way the world’s leading brands leverage technology to drive the best customer experiences. The **Director, Engineering** is accountable for enabling high-performing engineering squads to deliver reliable, maintainable, and high-quality software solutions. This role provides technical leadership, builds capability across engineers and technical leads, ensures adherence to engineering standards, and removes blockers that impede delivery, while partnering with Product, Delivery, and QA leadership to achieve business and customer outcomes. ### Responsibilities - **Engineering Enablement:** Ensure squads have the technical capability, processes, and practices to deliver reliably, removing engineering blockers and supporting predictable outcomes in partnership with Delivery leadership. - **Engineering Leadership & Capability:** Act as a chapter-style leader for engineers and technical leads, building capability, setting standards, and driving consistent engineering practices across squads. - **Technical Leadership, Debt & Design Quality:** Ensure sound technical design and implementation, actively managing technical debt and addressing complexity. - **Quality in Delivery:** Embed quality-by-design within engineering teams (e.g. testability, code quality, CI/CD discipline), while partnering with QA to achieve agreed quality outcomes. - **Platform Health & Operability:** Own the operational health of systems within scope, ensuring reliability, performance, and readiness across production and pre-production environments. - **People & Partner Leadership:** Lead and develop permanent and partner engineers (onshore and offshore), including performance management, engagement, and effective integration. - **Delivery Flow & Dependencies:** Enable squads to operate autonomously by removing engineering blockers, managing dependencies, and improving delivery flow in partnership with Product and Delivery. ### Capabilities - **Hands-on Technical Leadership:** Leads with strong engineering credibility and modelling high-quality full-stack engineering practices. - **Execution Focus:** Translates architectural direction and standards into practical, repeatable engineering practices that work at squad level. - **Problem Solving & Judgement:** Quickly diagnoses technical and delivery-adjacent issues, makes sound trade-offs, and removes engineering blockers. - **People Development:** Develops a high-performing team through clear expectations, feedback, and career coaching. - **Collaboration & Influence:** Works as a trusted partner to Product, Delivery & QA leaders to align engineering effort to shared outcomes. - **Ownership & Accountability:** Builds strong ownership within squads for code quality, operability, and continuous improvement. ### Qualifications - 8+ years’ experience in software engineering, with 3+ years in an engineering leadership roles, managing engineers and technical leads - Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience - Proven experience delivering enterprise-scale software platforms or digital products within complex, client environments - Strong hands-on background in modern full-stack software engineering, with deep experience in building highly scalable web applications supported by cloud-native or serverless architectures (AWS preferred), CI/CD pipelines, and distributed systems - Demonstrated experience leading cross-functional engineering teams operating in agile or product-led delivery models - Experience establishing and enforcing engineering standards, development practices, and delivery discipline across multiple squads - Proven ability to manage a blended workforce, including permanent staff and staff-augmented delivery partners (onshore and offshore) - Demonstrated experience in developing and executing plans that align with business objectives and growth