Mobile 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 Mobile Engineering Lead, you'll drive strategic direction and handle the organizational complexity for the mobile team, working alongside capable engineers who collaborate effectively on technical decisions. Your focus will be on creating clarity, managing dependencies across product streams, and ensuring the team can sustain momentum on both delivery and continuous improvement as they deliver our platform directly to frontline crimefighters on the move. The mobile app serves as a critical touchpoint for users in stores, on patrol, and in the field, enabling rapid incident reporting, real time intelligence, and coordinated response when it matters most.

Opportunities and challenges

We believe in transparency: The mobile team operates in a unique position within Auror's engineering organization. While other teams can contribute to our web platform experiences relatively independently, mobile development requires specialized Flutter and Dart expertise that sits within this team.

The mobile app currently serves over 10,000 active weekly users and handles critical workflows for frontline workers in challenging environments across the globe. The team continually solves real customer problems despite being small and highly demanded across the organization. However, this success has created new challenges: product teams across Auror increasingly depend on mobile capabilities, creating constant incoming demand that competes with planned work and strategic improvements.

This presents a genuine leadership opportunity to reshape how mobile works within Auror. You'll establish sustainable collaboration patterns with other product streams, build enabling infrastructure that reduces dependencies, drive the evolution of mobile architecture, and ensure the team can focus on delivering strategic mobile experiences while making it easier for other teams to deliver mobile value.

You'll be working with a talented team of mobile engineers who understand the domain deeply and make strong technical decisions collaboratively. They need a leader who can amplify their thinking, handle the organizational complexity, and create the conditions for them to sustain momentum on both delivery and continuous improvement.

You’ll be reporting to Francis Ho, Director of Engineering 

I’ve spent my entire career in various product based software companies including some hands-on experience as a mobile developer myself as well as a QA for the mobile apps team before moving into Quality Engineering and broader Engineering leadership. This background gives me a unique appreciation for the challenges mobile teams face, especially when they are the specialised team that enable mobile capabilities for teams across the entire organisation. I am excited about this Mobile Eng Lead role and the opportunity to set the team up for sustainable success.

For me there is something magical about using technology to transform an industry, boost efficiency, and make a real impact on how people work. At the core of this transformation are smart, capable individuals who create products that people love. My job is to clear the path for them, creating a space where they can focus, take pride in their work, have fun, and grow as individuals.

I’m an open book. My facial expressions often give away my feelings, and I tend to share information openly to help others succeed. I dislike vague or indirect communication and expect the same from others. There are better ways to use our limited energy during the day. If we can’t have open, honest conversations, we need to work on our trust. I believe in providing clarity, trusting my team, and supporting them to achieve their goals.

Outside of work, I love spending time with my young boy exploring the outdoors of Auckland. You will find me sipping my bubble tea and drinking all the trouble away.

What You’ll Do:

• Lead the mobile 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.
• Balance hands on development with strategic leadership, diving into code when needed while ensuring delivery pressure does not crowd out strategic thinking and technical improvements. 
• Work alongside engineers who already collaborate effectively on technical decisions, formalising practices that work, introducing new ones where needed, and empowering the team to own significant technical decisions and delivery.
• Partner with product and design as part of the trio to shape mobile solutions, translating business priorities and cost sensitivity into clear technical direction for the team while communicating technical tradeoffs in plain language to non technical stakeholders. Work with the team to evaluate options for non-trivial problems, represent clear recommendations that balance user value with technical investment, and provide feedback to the product team when proposed solutions do not fit the problem, the platform, or the level of investment warranted.
• Facilitate sustainable planning and estimation practices, ensuring they do not get squeezed out when delivery pressure is high. Create clarity around priorities so the team can make day to day technical and delivery decisions confidently, escalating only when tradeoffs materially affect scope, timing, or risk.
• Balance feature delivery with incoming requests and support from other teams and customers. Manage the organizational complexity of being a specialized team that others depend on, helping prioritize work so the mobile team is not constantly reactive at the expense of planned outcomes.
• Champion continuous improvement in engineering practices, including deployment automation, testing strategies for mobile, efficient code reviews, and comprehensive documentation. Keep momentum on technical improvements while balancing delivery commitments.
• Leverage AI tools strategically to amplify your team's capabilities, integrating GitHub Copilot, Cursor and Claude to accelerate development without sacrificing quality.

Requirements

About You

• Proven mobile technical expertise: Proven expertise in Native (Android/iOS) or Flutter development, with a deep focus on backend integration and API design strategy, coupled with the ability to understand technical decisions in the context of business value and organizational impact. While you will lead a team of Flutter specialists, your native foundational knowledge allows you to provide high-level architectural guidance.
• Leadership experience: Demonstrated experience leading engineering teams, managing performance, and cultivating a culture of accountability and excellence. Experience working with capable teams who need organizational support and strategic direction.
• Communication skills: The ability to distill complex technical concepts for both technical and non technical audiences, explain mobile specific constraints and opportunities to product teams, and work across teams to enable others through building platform capabilities or managing dependencies.
• Strategic collaboration and prioritisation: Comfortable managing competing priorities from multiple product streams, balancing immediate value with long term technical health, and making informed decisions about where to invest in enabling infrastructure versus direct feature delivery. A strategic mindset that considers how mobile fits within the wider platform architecture and positions the team for sustainable growth.
• 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.
• 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.