Engineering Team Lead

About Optimal

Optimal develops advanced research tools that empower teams to make informed, data-driven decisions. Trusted by major global brands, we prioritize exceptional user experiences and harness human insights to drive transformative results.

Role Overview

We are seeking an Engineering Team Lead who enjoys crafting outstanding products and nurturing engineering talent. As part of our small, driven team, you'll significantly influence the development, release, and scaling of our tools that enable teams to improve decision-making with user research.

Key Responsibilities

• Remain hands-on with the codebase to design and implement scalable, dependable systems.
• Collaborate with fellow technical leaders and the CTPO to guide engineering strategy, architecture, and platform foundations.
• Lead and develop a small engineering team fostering a culture centered on learning, ownership, and constructive feedback.
• Investigate and apply AI tools to boost developer efficiency and hasten project delivery.
• Coordinate closely with Product and Design to dissect challenges, strategize, and confidently execute releases.
• Remove obstacles and provide support to help the team achieve its objectives.
• Lead site reliability engineering practices including observability, incident management, on-call duties, and building scalable, secure, and resilient systems.

Candidate Profile

• An entrepreneurial perspective, caring deeply about product impact, customer success, and business outcomes.
• Proven leadership in mentoring or managing engineers while maintaining personal code contributions.
• A strong product focus that prioritizes outcomes over mere output, enjoying collaboration with product and design teams.
• Proactive and pragmatic approach with energy, decisiveness, and a bias toward action.
• Enthusiasm for leveraging AI in software development and a willingness to experiment with new technologies.
• Ability to thrive amid ambiguity, working toward high-level goals and helping define the direction forward.
• Experience with React, Ruby on Rails, AWS, infrastructure-as-code, and CI/CD or similar technology stacks.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation reflective of your expertise and contribution.
• Opportunity to participate in the Employee Share Option Plan (ESOP) for long-term company success benefits.
• Annual wellbeing allowance and support initiatives.
• Assistance with home office setup.
• Four weeks of annual leave plus an additional day off for your birthday.
• Flexible, remote-first working arrangements within New Zealand or Australia, with an optional hybrid option from our Wellington HQ.