Engineering Lead

About Auror

At Auror, we’re empowering the retail industry to stop theft and Organised Retail Crime, a $150 Billion problem globally. It’s high volume crime that’s increasingly organised in nature and is putting people, retailers, and communities at risk every day.

Founded in New Zealand 12 years ago, we’re working with some of the best and largest retailers in the world across the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.

Auror is connecting people and intelligence to reduce crime. We’re using technology for good and prioritize privacy by design principles. In partnership with our leading retail partners, we need people with the passion, determination, and innovation required to overcome one of the world's largest problems. If you’re looking to make a difference with and for the people dedicated to stopping crime, for good, then we want you on our team.

About the role:

Collaboration and growth mindset are at the heart of the Engineering team at Auror. We believe that to build impactful software it requires both technical excellence and empowered teams. Our leaders intentionally balance high care with high performance, shaping an environment where engineers thrive personally while delivering exceptional business outcomes for our customers.

We believe in pushing decision making to where the information lives, creating clarity that enables innovation. Joining as Engineering Lead for the Intel stream, you'll guide this highly visible team through an exciting renewal period. The team handles part of the product that acts as the essential gateway to our retail crime reporting platform, serving as the foundation for our entire system. You will guide and build a high performing team, ready to tackle some of the upcoming critical scaling challenges while still contributing to our codebase where possible.

Opportunities and challenges:

We believe in transparency: We have a renewed clarity for the team mission driven by some exciting opportunities in the product roadmap. These opportunities have allowed us to reset the skills and team composition for success. This presents a unique opportunity for the incoming Engineering Lead to shape team culture and technical direction with the support of experienced Auror engineers who understand our domain deeply. You'll be working with a system that was built by talented engineers who made the best decisions with the context available at the time, and now have the chance to architect solutions that scale our platform for our next phase of growth.

This role offers a genuine leadership opportunity, bringing fresh energy to the team, establishing sustainable engineering practices, and guiding pivotal architectural decisions for the most user facing part of our platform.

What you'll do:

• Lead the Intel engineering team by creating clarity and distributing authority, not just delegating tasks. You will mentor engineers by asking the right questions rather than simply providing answers.
• Drive technical excellence in our most user-facing systems by establishing clear intent, articulating the "why" behind decisions, and shifting control to where information lives within the team.
• Balance hands on development with strategic leadership, diving into code when needed while empowering your team to own significant technical decisions.
• Architect the evolution of our critical entry point systems toward a service-oriented architecture, ensuring we can scale to support our growth trajectory while enhancing the user experience.
• Leverage AI tools strategically to amplify your team's capabilities, integrating GitHub Copilot, Cursor, ChatGPT, and Claude to accelerate development without sacrificing quality.
• Champion engineering practices that foster both deliberate action and innovation, this might include things like having thoughtful testing strategies, efficient code reviews, and comprehensive documentation that allow us to scale.
• Collaborate with product leadership to ensure technical decisions amplify business impact, particularly in this highly visible area that shapes every user's interaction with our platform.
  

This role reports to Francis Ho, Director of Engineering

I fell into leadership the same way I fell into quality engineering, I asked too many questions. I started as a developer but soon realised I cared more about how things worked together than writing the code itself.

I think staying curious and experimenting with things is very important in this ever evolving world, especially in tech where things change so quickly. You will hear me say "Let's try it" a lot because I would rather test a few ideas than talk forever about the perfect solution. I believe the people closest to the problem usually have the best answers, and my job is to clear obstacles and give context, not control everything.

Watching someone solve a problem they thought was impossible is probably my favorite part of the job. I am a straight shooter, often thinking out loud. My team knows what I am thinking because my face can't hide anything.

Outside of work, I am usually busy surviving the chaos of parenting after work and trying to do work life integration, and when I have time I mess around with AI (partly to keep up since they change so often). I drink too much bubble tea and enjoy one too many wicked wings & chicken nuggets. If you like straight talk, interesting problems, and the occasional trolling, we will get along just fine

What we're looking for:

• Passion for integrating AI: Experience or interest in leveraging AI tools and LLMs as force multipliers for your team—not just following trends, but thoughtfully applying these technologies to enhance engineering practices, streamline workflows and accelerate delivery.
• Proven technical expertise: Strong proficiency in React, TypeScript, C# .NET Core, and cloud-native architectures, coupled with the ability to understand technical decisions in the context of business value
• Leadership experience: Demonstrated experience leading engineering teams, managing performance, and cultivating a culture of accountability and excellence.
• Communication skills: The ability to distill complex technical concepts for a variety of audiences, including non technical stakeholders.
• Big picture thinking: A strategic mindset that considers the broader business impact of engineering decisions, including scalability, performance, maintainability, and user experience when guiding architectural discussions.
• Prioritisation and decision-making: Skill in helping teams navigate trade-offs between immediate value and long-term technical health, breaking complex initiatives into meaningful, shippable increments..
• Passion for product quality: A strong understanding that technical excellence manifests as reliability, scalability, security, and data integrity, particularly crucial in our context of crime prevention and building safer communities.

We are looking for people who demonstrate a strong alignment to our Guiding Principles (you can find these on our Careers page).

Auror is committed to providing an inclusive and accessible application process to all candidates and we are actively working to improve diversity within the tech industry. We celebrate diversity and inclusiveness at Auror, regardless of (but not limited to) race, gender, sexual orientation, family status, religion, ethnicity, national origin, physical disability, veteran status, or age.

If you need adjustments to any part of our recruitment process because of accessibility reasons, please do not hesitate to let us know during the application process. We will work with you to identify adjustments that will allow you to perform at your best.

• Competitive salary range: This will depend on the level of experience. We have scoped this role as an PL3 with a hiring salary range of $145,000 - $170,000NZD.
• Employee share scheme: You’ll own part of a company making a real difference!
• Flexibility: We are hard-working and outcome focused, but recognise there is more to life than work. We promote a healthy work/life blend.
• Shorter work weeks (at full pay): Everyone gets Friday afternoons off, so you can start your weekend early, and do more of whatever it is that makes you happy.
• Focus on mental and physical health: We understand how vital our health is and have policies to support your wellness, including: Wellness Days,  and up to three expert sessions paid for every year.
• Health Care Plan: In partnership with Nib, Auror covers 100% of the cost of your individual health insurance plan.
• Family-friendly: We offer comprehensive parental leave and benefits for primary and non-primary caregivers, including a baby bonus and meals delivered to your door.
• Personal growth: We support our team to participate in courses, conferences, or events that will help them develop their skills.
• Team love: We have regular team lunches and social events where most (if not all) activities are during work hours.

Next steps:

If you’re excited about our mission and you have experience and a passion for this role, please hit “Apply” below. 

We’re proud that Auror is a place where everyone can learn and grow. So if you’re not sure that you tick all the boxes but feel you’re close to what we’re looking for, please apply anyway as we’d love to hear from you! 

You'll be asked to submit a cover letter as part of your application. While this is optional we do encourage it, as we find cover letters can tell a story that resumes alone often cannot. Our hiring team love to understand what attracted you to this role and why you are excited about the opportunity to join Auror.

Once you apply, you’ll hear from us to acknowledge your application. If you have questions about any of the above, or if you have any accessibility requirements, we’ll be able to help you from there.