Engineering Manager

Trade Me Role Description

At Trade Me, we're about connecting Kiwi to create the life they want. Whether it's the big things like finding a home, a job, a car or growing their business, or the smaller things, like finding that right bedside table or parting ways with some old stuff. At Trade Me our vision is to be the place where Kiwi look first.

Trade Me Motors is on a mission to be New Zealand's most trusted and easiest place to buy and sell vehicles. As an Engineering Manager, you own delivery, platform, and people leadership of one or more product portfolios. You work closely with product leaders to make sure the platforms in your portfolio are fit for purpose and capable of the growth we are envisioning. You employ platform-as-product practices to make sure the right platforms capabilities are prioritised to enable desirable product experiences.

Your main areas of focus will be developing the next generation of technical engineers and leaders, streamlining cross-functional delivery, and evolving engineering practices to increase speed-to-value. You spend a meaningful portion of your time hands-on, working with your team building prototypes, and ship high-value initiatives to production.

Here is what you can expect from this role:

• Turn strategy into delivery: translate business and product strategy into actionable plans across multiple engineering teams, shaping value streams, resourcing and technical dependencies.

• Bring the technical vision to life: contribute to the long-term platform strategy and make it real: architectural blueprints implemented, obstacles cleared, ambitious platform roadmaps defined.

• Lead complex, high-stakes technical initiatives: own projects spanning multiple teams and domains, partnering closely with architecture and technical product delivery.

• Grow the leader: line manage Engineering, Engineering Leads, coaching them through technical mentorship and development plans that lift talent density across the org.

• Stay hands-on: at least 30% of your time in the code, focused on critical knowledge areas, urgent work and high-value platform initiatives.

• Own reliability and resilience: drive re-architecture where it's needed, hold vendors to their SLAs, lift operability across your portfolio and keep disaster recovery plans live and current.

• Raise the engineering bar org-wide: identify and embed industry best practice (think pair programming as a sensible default, system-level SLOs) beyond just your own teams.

• Champion AI across the SDLC and PDLC: advocate for and embed AI into how we build and how we discover, from coding, testing and code review through to product research, prototyping and delivery, setting the standard for safe, pragmatic adoption across your teams.

What you will bring to our team:

• 10+ yrs Engineering Practice: Deep mastery of architecture, software design patterns, and agile delivery of complex, strategic technical initiatives.

• 5+ yrs People Leadership: Proven track record leading 7+ engineers, including Staff+ and Leads, while driving continuous improvement.

• Technical Breadth & Depth: Collaborates with PSEs to establish high-impact architecture and practices aligned with business growth.

• Customer & Project Focus: Customer-centric mindset with demonstrated ability to manage complex initiatives across multiple teams and portfolios.

You'll have the best time working at Trade Me, and this is why:

#AI and Tech: We live and breathe AI in our daily tasks. We value curiosity and an open mind towards new tech, offering dedicated AI skilling to help you grow and thrive in a fast-changing landscape.

#Flexibility: Flexibility means different things to different people and we support you to find what works, including a home office set up and utilities allowance. We value team connection and come together in person on Monday and at least one other day a week.

#Wellness: Being your best self means caring for your physical and mental wellbeing, we offer lots of resources to help you along the way.

#Leave: We support you with leave when you need it, including 5 days of wellness leave each year and 10 days of sick leave from day 1.

#Social: Nothing beats getting together to have some fun and celebrate our success. Join us in the office on payday for company paid lunches. Regular Friday drinks and nibbles, annual Trade Me company awards, celebrations and more.

#Learning: Whether it's on the job, formal training, or mentoring, you'll grow with us from Day 1. We're big on internal mobility and look to our own talent first for new opportunities.

We know some candidates can be reluctant to apply for roles if they feel they don't 'tick all the boxes'. If you're excited about this opportunity, we'd still really like to hear from you so please send us your resume and a short cover note outlining the “Why”.

Trade Me is an INZ accredited employer. We truly value diversity and embrace a flexible workplace where people are encouraged to achieve their potential.

Check out the job description for this role here.