Engineering Manager

As an Engineering Manager at Rosterfy, you lead one engineering team and directly manage its engineers. Your team owns a set of domains in the Rosterfy platform - under our domain ownership model that means full-lifecycle accountability for those domains: features, bugs, alerts, SLOs, architecture and long-term health. This is a hands-on role: you are expected to be in the code every week, not managing from a distance. You also run the team's rituals and quarterly OKR planning, and own the career development and performance of your direct reports. Each EM leads a single team. Being hands-on is a standing expectation of this role. We expect you to remain a genuinely capable engineer in Laravel (PHP 8+), Next.js and AWS. You're the trusted advisor to your squad in all facets of Engineering, whether it is Technical discovery, code quality, problem solving, AI tooling etc. Key Responsibilities: • Pick up real tickets each sprint - features, fixes, spikes and production issues - sized so you don't become the critical path • Perform regular code reviews and act as a primary technical consultant for the team • Lead technical discovery and solution design with your Lead Engineer and the Principal Engineer, and write the ADRs for your domains • Collaborate with your team to debug and respond to incidents in your domains • Keep current with the codebase and the platform's direction - modernisation, refactoring and platform work included • Directly manage the engineers in your team - regular 1:1s, set clear role expectations, deliver constructive feedback, conduct performance reviews and create career development plans for each direct report • Hire, onboard and retain great engineers; build an inclusive, high-trust team culture • Coach engineers across levels and create growth opportunities through stretch work and delegation • Own your team's domains end to end - "you build it, you run it": SLOs, dashboards, alert response, bug triage and technical debt within your domain boundaries • Ensure each domain stays documented (README, API contracts, runbooks) and is a genuine centre of expertise in the team • Uphold architectural principles and engineering standards in your domains, and contribute to shared standards across engineering • Coordinate with other domain owners on cross-domain changes and with the Shared Kernel where changes ripple platform-wide • Balance feature delivery against the health of the domains you own, and make that trade-off visible to Product and the Head of Engineering • Facilitate team rituals: sprint planning, daily stand-ups, backlog refinement, estimation, sprint reviews and retrospectives • Lead quarterly OKR planning for the team and translate company and product goals into measurable outcomes • Own delivery and execution of team goals, including monthly reporting on progress, risks and velocity • Unblock the team, manage cross-team dependencies, and elevate delivery risks early • Partner closely with your Product Manager and designer to shape the roadmap, turn product problems into technical solutions, and make scope trade-offs • Work with Customer Success to understand customer impact, prioritise escalations and close the loop on delivered value • Collaborate with other Engineering Managers, the Principal Engineer and the Platform Engineer on cross-cutting technical direction and platform investments • Be the clear escalation point for your domains - support, product and partners know to come to your team • As part of the Engineering leadership team, lead the continuous improvement evolution with your squad. Technical • 7+ years in full-stack software engineering roles, including 2+ years leading engineers as a Tech Lead or Engineering Manager with direct reports • Currently hands-on and intending to stay that way - you have shipped production code recently and want a role where that continues • Experience delivering production features using Laravel (Laravel 10+ and PHP 8+) and modern frontend frameworks (React/Next.js) • Experience with event-driven systems, asynchronous workflows and message queues (e.g. AWS SQS, Kafka, Pub/Sub) • Experience with design systems and frontend architecture • Experience with platform engineering or building shared infrastructure in a modular monolith • Experience scaling a team - hiring, onboarding, and building or applying career frameworks • Strong command of agile practices and running delivery cycles end to end - planning, execution, reporting • Strong with CI/CD pipelines, testing frameworks and cloud environments (AWS required) • Comfortable owning operational responsibility - SLOs, alerting, incident response - for the systems your team runs • Track record of managing performance and career growth for engineers at different levels Strategic AI Driven Readiness • Accelerate team delivery through AI pair programming, story automation and AI-assisted planning • Influence DevEx strategy around AI tools and secure LLM usage across the engineering team • Evaluate build-vs-buy for AI features (e.g., RAG, summarisation, LLM scoring) with Product and the Principal Engineer Character & Mindset • Hands-on by choice - You want to stay in the code. You lead from inside the work, not from a status report. • People-first leader - You care about the growth and wellbeing of your team, give honest feedback with empathy, and take ownership of team outcomes. • Owner's mindset - You treat your domains as yours to steward, not just code you happen to touch. • Resilient and adaptable - You embrace change and help others navigate ambiguity with calm and confidence. • Proactive problem solver - You identify issues early, take ownership, and push solutions forward without waiting to be asked. • Clear communicator - You articulate ideas clearly, write well, and listen with intent. You create shared understanding across engineering, product and the business. • Product-minded - You're curious about customer needs, ask "why?", and advocate for solutions that deliver real value. • Documentation-first thinker - You value written clarity and help your team by documenting decisions, plans and processes. • Champion shift-left QA: test strategy, automation, pipeline health, regression control and observability Success Measures • Team consistently delivers on sprint commitments and quarterly OKRs with high quality • You are still shipping and reviewing code - the team sees you as a technical peer, not just their manager • Engineers have clear career plans, receive regular feedback, and report feeling supported, unblocked and coached • Every alert and bug in your domains has a clear owner and is responded to; bug backlogs trend down • Your domains are documented, observable and improving in health, not just accumulating features • Performance reviews are fair, timely and well calibrated across teams • Product, Customer Success and other EMs describe the team as a reliable, transparent partner Nice to have: • Experience with data products like Looker, BigQuery, or analytics pipelines • Infrastructure patterns such as IaC or Kubernetes • Any exposure to AI driven tooling, systems Remuneration and Benefits Package (AUD) • Competitive salary offering • Paid time off to participate in volunteering activities • Referral bonuses and recognition programs Who we are Rosterfy is a global leading, end-to-end enterprise volunteer engagement platform powering over 100 million volunteer hours. We exist to connect communities to events and causes they are passionate about. Used by over 3 million volunteers across 26 different countries, our SaaS platform powers mass volunteer programs across the globe for Not-for-Profits, local government, sporting federations, and major events. Our all in one solution helps our clients to recruit, retain, reward and train their volunteers, whilst also ensuring compliance. Headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, with offices in Sydney, London, Dallas, Denver & New York, our vibrant, inclusive and p