Engineering Manager

Melbourne - Australia

Monthly Salary: Not Disclosed

Posted on: Yesterday

Vacancies: 1 Vacancy

Job Summary

Job Description

Build the AI-Powered Backbone of Global Customer Experience
At Zendesk we arent just reacting to the AI revolution; we are building the infrastructure that defines it. Our Core Services team in Melbourne is responsible for the high-scale distributed systems that power millions of human connections every day.

Why join this team

Scale that Matters: You will own the engine room of Zendesk managing services like data delivery and authentication that support massive enterprise global traffic.
The AI Frontier: This isnt a maintenance role. You will be at the forefront of AIOps embedding machine learning into our DNA to automate incident triage and revolutionise developer productivity.
Modernisation Mandate: Youll have the autonomy to drive a multi-year roadmap moving us toward a more cost-aware resilient and AI-driven architecture.

What Youll Be Doing

Lead & Empower: Mentor a cross-functional team of engineers fostering a culture of high ownership and psychological safety.
Architect the Future: Define the technical roadmap for platform modernisation (Orchestration Data Delivery Auth) while balancing keeping the lights on with aggressive innovation.
Pioneer MLOps: Establish deployment patterns for platform-facing models focusing on embeddings ranking and observability to reduce manual toil.
Drive Execution: Partner with PMs to ship predictably using DORA metrics and error budgets to maintain a world-class delivery cadence.
Operational Excellence: Champion modern CI/CD canary deployments and robust observability to ensure our systems are as resilient as they are scalable.

What You Bring

The ideal candidate is a seasoned engineer who transitioned into leadership because they love scaling people as much as they love scaling systems.

Leadership: 2 years of direct experience managing software teams in a production environment.
Technical Depth: 5 years of hands-on experience with complex high-throughput distributed systems (ideally Ruby Java or Scala).
Cloud Native: Deep familiarity with AWS Kubernetes and modern CI/CD (GitHub Actions).
The AI Curious Mindset: A strong interest or experience in AIOps or MLOps you see the potential for AI to solve infrastructure problems.
Communication: The ability to translate complex technical strategy into a compelling narrative for stakeholders and your team alike.

Bonus Points For...

Experience in a high-scale SaaS environment.
Direct experience with SageMaker MLflow or vector search architectures.
A track record of leading major re-architecture initiatives that significantly reduced costs or improved developer velocity.

Why Zendesk
We offer a hybrid work model that balances the energy of our Melbourne hub with the flexibility you need. Beyond competitive pay and and other benefits youll gain the opportunity to leave a legacy on a platform used by the worlds most iconic brands.

Hybrid: In this role our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection collaboration learning and celebration - while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. This role must attend our local office for part of the week. The specific in-office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager.

The intelligent heart of customer experience

Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.

Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working enables us to purposefully come together in person at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world to connect collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.

As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision systems may be used to screen or evaluate applications for this position in accordance with Company guidelines and applicable law.

Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer and were proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity equity & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race color religion national origin age sex gender gender identity gender expression sexual orientation marital status medical condition ancestry disability military or veteran status or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law please click here.

Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application complete any pre-employment testing or otherwise participate in the employee selection process please send an e-mail to with your specific accommodation request.

Required Experience:

Manager

Job DescriptionBuild the AI-Powered Backbone of Global Customer ExperienceAt Zendesk we arent just reacting to the AI revolution; we are building the infrastructure that defines it. Our Core Services team in Melbourne is responsible for the high-scale distributed systems that power millions of human...