Engineering Lead

About Auror

At Auror, we’re empowering the retail industry to tackle 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 11 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. 

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.

We're also embracing the potential of AI to supercharge our impact—whether that's enhancing the way we detect trends, support our customers, or improve internal workflows. As a company, we're committed to responsibly incorporating AI into how we work and what we build, and we encourage all Aurors to be curious about how AI can elevate their work, regardless of role or function.

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 the Engineering Lead, you'll guide this engineering team through the continued development of our defining product capabilities. The teams handle part of the product that serves as the key collaboration point between customers and law enforcement, driving real-world impact to reduce crime. You will guide and build a high performing team, ready to tackle some of the upcoming scaling challenges and evolving the product capability.

Opportunities and challenges

We believe in transparency: You'll be working with a system that was built by talented engineers, but as our customer base and company mission has grown  we now have the chance to architect solutions that scale our platform for the next phase of growth. 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.

This role offers a genuine leadership opportunity, bringing fresh energy to the team, establishing sustainable engineering practices, and guiding pivotal architectural decisions for a core  product capability.

What You’ll Do:

• Lead the 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 a core domain by establishing clear intent, articulating the "why" behind decisions, and shifting control to where context 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 and delivery.
• 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 impactful area of the product. 

This role reports to Alicia Liebenberg, Director of Engineering 

I’ve spent two decades growing through the full arc of software engineering: from a software engineer, through release and platform roles, and eventually into leading multiple engineering teams across product, platform, and operational domains. My background sits firmly in the SaaS and enterprise software world, building systems that need to scale, stay resilient, and serve customers who depend on them every day.

I lead with clarity, curiosity, and a people-first mindset. I believe great engineering happens when teams feel safe, supported, and challenged in all the right ways. I care deeply about craft, communication, and creating an environment where people do the best work of their careers. You’ll find me pushing for pragmatism, sharing context early and often, and looking for the story underneath the technical work so we stay connected to the impact we’re making.

If you join the team, you can expect partnership, honest feedback, space to grow, and someone who genuinely wants you to succeed.

Requirements

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Benefits

• Competitive salary Range: Depending on level of experience of PL3 ($145,000 - $175,000)

• 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.
• Health Care Plan: In partnership with Nib, Auror covers 100% of the cost of your individual health insurance plan.
• 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.
• 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 the experience and a passion for this role, please hit “Apply”.

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! We’re proud that Auror is a place where everyone can learn and grow so 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.