Development Lead

Totara is an innovative technology leader in the learning and development space, and a provider of learning development and HR solutions for 1500 customers across a variety of sectors in over 150 countries. At Totara you will find an army of talented, motivated, and ambitious people. Our team consists of over 200 people across 3 offices in the UK, US and NZ. As a community that looks after each other, we value diversity, collaboration, and personal development.

We’re on the lookout for an experienced Dev Lead for one of our teams working on our core product. As a Dev Lead, you’re responsible for cultivating a thriving team alongside your peers and supported by our leaders. Our Dev Leads grow the capability of their team members through mentoring and regular feedback. They lead their team through development and help Totara build great software for our customers. We're particularly looking for someone who is a full-stack developer but with a specialisation in Front-End technologies and we’d love that someone to be in Wellington. The team has a graduate engineer and we’d love them to be supported in-person by their Dev Lead.

Totara isn’t your typical SaaS company. Our global network of partners runs our product for many of our customers. This means we support multiple versions of our product and we release quarterly. But it also means that you won't have to worry about 24/7 support rosters! Our distributed development team is almost entirely based in New Zealand, we rarely need to meet outside of business hours, and we have a flexible work environment:

• Wellington-based? We have a strong preference for someone in Wellington. You’ll have a desk in our centrally located Willis Street office for flexible, hybrid-working.
• Located elsewhere in New Zealand? For the right candidate we’ll be happy to have you as a part of our remote team. We’ll ensure you spend quality in-person time with your team at least once or twice a year.

Your Role

As a Dev Lead at Totara, you will play a key role in one of our core product teams, collaborating with team members and stakeholders. You’ll work with your team and our Principal Engineer and Architects to develop software for our customers. In your day-to-day you’ll be part of a leadership trio with team members from Product and Design, getting a pipeline of work ready for the team. You’ll also directly contribute to new features, bug fixes and maintenance. We expect our Dev Leads to grow every member of their team from grads to seniors with the support of our Engineering Managers. This role doesn’t have line management responsibilities, but it is a foundational part of the team supporting all our engineers to grow and develop. Here are some of the things we need our Dev Leads to do:

• Cultivate a high-performing development team with your peers and supported by our leaders
• Grow the capability of developers in your team through mentoring and feedback.
• Ensure the team develops quality solutions that align with our technical strategy and will satisfy our customers
• Build a world-class engineering culture within the team
• Guide your team to develop effective ways of discovering and delivering valuable work (i.e. help identify, verify, decide, and break down work to be delivered within the allocated time frame)
• Support healthy communication within the team and with stakeholders.
• Role model great development within the team
• Contribute to our team of Development Leads

Our tech stack includes:

• PHP
• Vue.js (as well as server-rendered pages)
• PostgreSQL/MySQL/MariaDB/MSSQL
• GitHub

Developers can use either Windows+WSL or MacOS.

You’ll be supported by an experienced Engineering Manager, and you’ll have the opportunity to develop your skills and take on new challenges which align with your career goals.

What you’ll bring

We’re seeking an experienced Dev Lead who has a solid foundation of commercial team leading experience. While we expect familiarity with many of the following areas, we provide opportunities and support for further growth and development.

The knowledge, skills and experience were looking for:

• Growth mindset with strong emotional intelligence and collaboration skills
• Great communication and ability to adapt your working style
• Experience in leading cross-functional teams through solution discovery and delivery
• Experience mentoring grads and juniors
• Proficiency in Git, continuous integration, issue tracking, and pull request workflows
• Strong troubleshooting skills, including performance and security issues
• Understanding of modern software development methodologies, principles, and patterns
• Excellent understanding of code quality and writing testable code
• Experience with unit, integration, and acceptance testing
• Knowledge of web security issues and securing code
• Proficiency in HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and frameworks like Vue.js or React, with expertise in web accessibility and responsive design
• Proficiency in PHP or similar languages and SQL databases

What We Offer

Joining our team means joining the pursuit to create effective and engaging learning workplaces for all. We’re looking for people who are excited about making an impact on the global stage and are passionate about working in the software product industry.

Working at Totara, you’ll have:

• A collaborative, high-autonomy work environment, where your ideas have real impact.
• A passionate and creative team solving real-world customer challenges.
• Competitive salary, flexible working, and professional development support.
• Some of our benefits include health insurance, a yearly wellbeing allowance, a work from home set up allowance, fruit and coffee in the office as well as opportunities to gather regularly with your workmates.
• A highly skilled, well-connected international team supporting your success.

We know people will often read a list of requirements in job ads and not apply because they don’t see themselves reflected in the description, especially those who are minorities in the tech industry, often women. Please do apply! We care about increasing the contribution from women and gender-minorities in our team. We are also keen on many of the other attributes and character traits that make good, diverse, engineering teams.

If you’re neurodivergent we’ll work with you to make the interview process clear, understandable and accessible. If you’re a parent or carer we’re happy to go remote first if it is easier to fit around your family needs. If you have other needs for our interview process like a support person, we’re happy to work with you so you can be as prepared and confident as possible going into the interview.

We’d love to hear about why you can see yourself at Totara so please send through your CV and cover letter in one document to our hiring manager! A caveat about AI usage on cover letters: our hiring manager would rather hear from you briefly, in your own words. Many AI cover letters end up reading like templates.