Director of Engineering

Freelancer.com; Sydney; On-site; AUD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Sydney HQ location

Premium benefits

Career growth opportunities

Job summary

Freelancer.com in Sydney is seeking an experienced Director of Engineering to lead and scale high-performance teams delivering category-defining platforms. You will drive technical vision, collaborate with senior architects, and oversee distributed systems across payments, messaging, and translations.

You will mentor engineers, foster ownership, and maintain engineering excellence while balancing rapid delivery and reliability at internet scale.

Qualifications

• Proven track record leading large engineering teams delivering mission-critical systems.
• Experience with web-scale platforms serving millions of users.

Responsibilities

• Build and scale high-performance engineering teams that ship production code regularly.
• Drive technical vision and execution with cross-functional partners.
• Architect for impact across distributed systems including messaging, payments, translations, and notifications.
• Lead through influence with stakeholders from product to exec leadership.
• Elevate engineering excellence with code quality, reviews, and learning culture.
• Optimize outcomes balancing speed, quality, and technical debt.
• Cultivate championship culture centered on company values.

Skills

Leadership experience

Internet-scale engineering

Architecture depth

Agile delivery

Communication excellence

Ownership mindset

Learning velocity

Problem solving

Distributed systems

Education

Bachelor's in Computer Science or Engineering

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

AWS

Frontend frameworks (Angular/React/Vue)

Job description

Imagine leading engineering teams that power platforms serving over 85 million users globally. Picture yourself architecting systems that have transformed how business gets done, from the world's largest freelancing marketplace to a payment ecosystem securing over US$8 billion in transactions.

This is your chance to join Freelancer (ASX: FLN) and lead engineering for category-defining platforms:

Freelancer: Fourteen-time Webby Award winner and the heartbeat of work online

Escrow.com: The trust layer of the internet, safeguarding billions in transactions

LoadShift: Australia's freight revolution, moving more tonnage than Earth to the moon on weekdays

You'll thrive here if you: Dream in systems. Think in architecture. Believe great engineering solves real problems at scale, not just ships code.

Lead brilliant engineering minds across six continents, from Sydney to San Francisco. Our culture celebrates technical excellence, thrives on rapid iteration, and measures success in impact.

Ready to build products that matter to millions?

Imagine leading engineering teams that power platforms serving over 85 million users globally. Picture yourself architecting systems that have transformed how business gets done, from the world's largest freelancing marketplace to a payment ecosystem securing over US$8 billion in transactions.

This is your chance to join Freelancer (ASX: FLN) and lead engineering for category-defining platforms:

Freelancer: Fourteen-time Webby Award winner and the heartbeat of work online

Escrow.com: The trust layer of the internet, safeguarding billions in transactions

LoadShift: Australia's freight revolution, moving more tonnage than Earth to the moon on weekdays

You'll thrive here if you: Dream in systems. Think in architecture. Believe great engineering solves real problems at scale, not just ships code.

Lead brilliant engineering minds across six continents, from Sydney to San Francisco. Our culture celebrates technical excellence, thrives on rapid iteration, and measures success in impact.

Ready to build products that matter to millions?

As Director of Engineering, you will:

• Build and scale high-performance engineering teams that ship production code multiple times daily, cultivating a culture of ownership, quality, and continuous improvement across globally distributed squads
• Drive technical vision and execution by partnering with engineering teams to develop roadmaps, define delivery goals, and achieve them within aggressive timelines while maintaining our reputation for reliability at internet scale
• Architect for impact engaging directly with senior architects to contribute to technical plans and designs that solve complex distributed systems challenges across messaging, payments, translations, and notification systems processing millions of events hourly
• Lead through influence communicating effectively with stakeholders business-wide, from product managers to C-suite, translating technical complexity into business value and strategic decisions
• Elevate engineering excellence by establishing and practicing world‑class engineering habits, maintaining high standards of software quality through code review, testing discipline, and continuous learning culture
• Optimise across constraints working closely with product managers and cross‑functional teams to achieve the best outcomes given competing priorities of speed, quality, and technical debt management
• Cultivate championship culture centered on our company values, where engineers take charge, improve daily, leverage data, and perform like a pro sports team

Requirements:

• Leadership experience managing and scaling development teams, with proven track record of building high-performing engineering organisations that consistently deliver business‑critical systems
• Internet‑scale engineering expertise with significant experience building and operating large‑scale web software serving millions of users across modern frontend stacks (Angular/React/Vue) and distributed backend systems
• Agile delivery mastery working in continuously shipping environments where multiple deploys per day is standard, balancing technical excellence with aggressive delivery timelines
• Technical depth that earns respect - We expect you can engage with our senior architects to contribute meaningfully to technical plans and designs, not just manage from above
• Communication excellence with strong writing and verbal skills to articulate technical strategy, influence stakeholders, and mentor engineers at all levels
• Ownership mindset demonstrating self‑management, accountability for outcomes, and the ability to drive results without hand‑holding
• Learning velocity with track record of rapidly acquiring new technologies and applying them to solve complex problems in production environments
• Problem‑solving creativity combining strong troubleshooting skills with innovative thinking to tackle novel challenges at scale
• Academic foundation with tertiary degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field; MSc or PhD a plus

Nice to haves:

• Cloud computing mastery, preferably AWS with experience architecting for scalability, reliability, and cost optimisation
• Deep expertise in SOA, microservices, and containerisation architectures using Docker, Kubernetes, and modern orchestration tools
• Public API design and development experience building developer‑facing platforms that scale
• Full‑stack proficiency with web development languages including Python, Go, and modern JavaScript frameworks
• Database expertise with relational databases, SQL optimisation, and experience with distributed data systems
• Cross‑platform systems knowledge spanning Windows and Linux environments
• Networking depth with strong understanding of computer networking, load balancing, and CDN optimisation
• Security consciousness with sound understanding of OWASP and web security best practices applied in production

What's In It For You:

Career Acceleration

• True meritocracy: Your impact directly drives your trajectory. Our VP of Product started as a grad. Our Head of Support began as a CX agent.
• Ownership culture: Lead teams like you own the business. We reward those who think and act like founders, not just managers.
• Direct CEO access: Weekly Town Halls with unfiltered Q&A. Your engineering strategy reaches the top without bureaucracy.

Innovation & Learning

• Quarterly Hackathons: Two‑day innovation sprints where engineering teams ship real solutions, compete for prizes, and see their ideas go to production
• Technology diversity playground: Work across cutting‑edge stacks - Angular/TypeScript/RxJS frontends, Python/Go microservices, AWS cloud architecture, and distributed systems processing internet‑scale traffic
• Global scale challenges: Debug systems serving 80M users across multiple products. Few engineers get this breadth of complexity and impact
• Continuous learning environment: Exposure to diverse engineering challenges across Freelancer.com (Alexa top 1000), Escrow.com's transaction processing, and LoadShift's logistics optimisation

Lifestyle & Perks

• Premium Sydney HQ: Grosvenor Place with harbour views of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House, plus weekly building events and wellness programs
• Friday culture: Catered lunches featuring rotating local restaurants, team celebrations, and informal technical discussions
• Engineering‑friendly amenities: Everything you need for long debugging sessions, architecture planning, and code review marathons

Just when you thought it couldn't get any better:

The Impact You'll Make:

You won't be optimising page load times for another photo‑sharing app. You'll be architecting systems that connect over 85 million people to economic opportunity worldwide. Every line of code your teams ship directly impacts someone's ability to earn a living, build a business, or change their life trajectory.

Our values aren't just words on Slack, they're how we engineer:

Change Lives isn't marketing copy - it's our engineering mission. Last month alone, our platforms powered commerce across 247 countries, regions and territories. Your engineering leadership will literally help feed families, fund education, and build futures.

Take Charge: Own your technical decisions like a founder. No hand‑holding, just ownership and impact

What Can I Improve Today?: We ship to production multiple times daily, iterate constantly, and never settle for "good enough"

What Does the Data Say?: Every architectural decision backed by metrics, every performance assumption tested in production

We're a Pro‑Sports Team: We recruit the best engineers, reward performance, and build to win at scale

Our mission: Enable one billion jobs globally. This is the engineering challenge that defines us.

Career trajectory that matches your ambition: We promote from within and produce industry leaders. Our meritocratic culture is renowned for promoting into senior roles from within and developing engineering executives who go on to lead at major tech companies. When you deliver results here, your career moves at startup speed with public company resources and internet‑scale problems.

This won't be your typical cog‑in‑the‑machine type of job. If you're a high achiever with talent, looking for something more than a boring job in corporate, want to work with the best and brightest engineers, don't need to be handheld, and want to be in at ground zero with a company that has a shot at being one of the biggest sites on the Internet, then please join us.