Chief Technology Officer

iterate; City of Melbourne; On-site; AUD 260,000 - 420,000; Full time

Job summary

iterate is seeking a senior engineering leader to own execution across product squads, platform, business systems and cyber/security. You will partner directly with the CPTO, CPO and senior leadership, shaping the roadmap and building an organization able to deliver a major product transformation and international expansion.

This is a founder-like, high-impact role reporting to the CTO/CPO, with strong visibility into board-level discussions on structure, strategy and investment.

Qualifications

• Executive-level leadership with a people-first approach.
• Execution-focused, able to move fast while maintaining quality.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration with product, design and commercial teams.
• Scale-up/startup experience and exposure to platform/architecture decisions.

Responsibilities

• Lead and grow engineering org to 35-40 engineers across squads and platforms.
• Own execution of a major initiative to split the core product.
• Stand up new teams from scratch and shape the FY27 roadmap.
• Prepare the engineering org and architecture for international expansion.
• Drive AI adoption and automation across engineering and business.

Skills

Leadership

Strategy & roadmapping

Cross-functional collaboration

Platform architecture

AI adoption

Job description

Our client is a profitable, fast-growing technology business that has recently been backed by a leading global private equity firm. Having scaled past 35-40 people in engineering with strong revenue and minimal outside capital, the business is now investing seriously in engineering leadership to match its next phase of growth including a major product transformation launching this November and an international expansion roadmap for FY27.

This is a newly created, high-impact leadership role reporting into the Chief Product & Technology Officer, with the scope and seniority to be positioned as CTO or VP Engineering.

You’ll be the most senior dedicated engineering leader in the business, owning execution across product squads, a newly forming platform team, business systems and security.

The Opportunity:

• Lead and grow an engineering organisation of 35-40 people across product squads, platform, business systems and cyber/security.
• Own execution of a major initiative which would involve splitting the core product.
• Stand up a new teams from scratch.
• Shape the FY27 roadmap and prepare the engineering org and architecture for international expansion.
• Drive a genuine AI adoption and automation agenda across engineering and the broader business.
• Partner directly with the CPTO, CPO and senior leadership, with visibility into board-level conversations on structure, strategy and investment.

What You'll Be Walking Into:

• A business with strong fundamentals profitable, well-regarded in its category, and growing.
• A supportive, collaborative C-suite partner already in place and actively championing the case for this role.
• Real problems worth solving: platform architecture that needs deliberate investment, communication and alignment gaps to close as the team scales, and uneven workload distribution across squads to resolve.
• A tight, real deadline (November) that will force focus and give you an early, visible win to build credibility on.

About You:

• A genuine leader of technology people first someone who builds trust, communicates strategy clearly, and brings teams with them through change.
• Execution-focused, comfortable operating at pace without sacrificing quality, and able to bring discipline to a business that has grown faster than its processes.
• Strong cross-functional collaborator who can work as a true peer to product, design and commercial leadership not just an engineering function head.
• Ideally has scale-up or startup experience, a software engineering background, and exposure to platform/architecture decisions, multi-region operations, or zero-to-one and scaling journeys though these are advantages rather than hard requirements.
• Comfortable with ambiguity: this role's exact title and reporting line are still being finalised, and the right candidate will help inform that decision as much as fit into it.