Vice President, Software Engineering – Based In Melbourne, Australia

Job Description

Zendesk is looking for an experienced Vice President of Engineering to lead our product development office in Melbourne, Australia, and across the ANZ region.

This role will be based in Australia however, we’re happy to discuss relocation with applicants outside of Australia as part of the recruitment process.

The ideal candidate for this role is a seasoned engineering leader who has experience with application software development, operations, and infrastructure (with an emphasis on cloud computing) in a globally-distributed organisation.

Delivery responsibilities will be concentrated within the global Platform Engineering organisation, specifically within ANZ.

Since this position will be responsible for site-level leadership within Product Development (Engineering, Product Management, and Design), you will need to be comfortable with “aligned autonomy”, working across different geographies with your product development and engineering counterparts, along with building positive relationships with your business partners. This position requires global presence and awareness, as Zendesk is a company that operates with 11 engineering offices across 8 countries.

Being a leader with vision and an ambassador to the Melbourne and broader ANZ product development culture is crucial to this role, since Zendesk is an active participant and contributor in a number of software engineering groups in the community. You’ll partner closely with the senior leadership team, across all represented business functions to continue to grow Zendesk’s competitive advantage for talent acquisition.

A strong background and presence in diversity, equity and inclusion is a must-have for this position. We believe in leading by example and it starts with senior leadership.

As well as managing, developing and supporting experienced engineering staff, you’ll also actively influence technical and product discussions, along with planning technical, product, organisational, and site level strategy and direction. Being able to set clear goals/OKRs and contribute constructively to these discussions are key to ensuring your success.

A successful candidate will be naturally inquisitive in both full stack and across all disciplines of Product Development. It’s important that this role be able to provide senior leadership support to other functions outside the primary focus area of delivery, which is Platform.

What you get to do every day:

Lead a group of hardworking and highly passionate engineers.

Work closely with senior leaders to deliver on our product development commitments.

Continuously improve and monitor the reliability of all Zendesk systems and services that are developed and operated by the Platform development team in ANZ.

Hire and recruit top engineering talent for Zendesk.

Engage as a senior engineering leader and representative, with Zendesk customers in the APAC region.

Participate in region-level strategic development for Zendesk, with other leaders in APAC, some of whom report to the office of the COO.

Partner with geographically distributed individuals in Product Development.

Work with the existing management to continually improve delivery, grow the team responsibly and ensure team health (both in your organisation and for all of ANZ Product Development). This requires heavy dotted-line relationships with the rest of the Product Development functions in the region.

Communicate progress and key decisions broadly within the organisation.

Develop growth and training programs for Zendesk engineers and engineering leaders in ANZ.

Owning the head of office function, which is shared between our local leaders.

What you’ll bring to the role:

Previous experience in a VP of Engineering role with a history of delivering high-quality products built for scale and flexibility.

A track record of building impactful, self-sufficient teams. This could be from hiring the right talent to mentoring & growing it internally.

Active participation in the development of engineering talent acquisition.

The ability to interact with individuals and leaders across different business functions.

A strong desire to engage with the local software engineering community, as a representative of Zendesk.

Comfort having both architecture discussions with engineers and feature/strategy discussions with Product Managers, along with functional use of the product with Design.

Experience with large-scale SaaS architecture.

Outstanding communication skills.