Engineering Manager - Machine Learning

REA; City of Melbourne; Hybrid; AUD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid working

Birthday leave

Purchased leave

Parental leave

Hackdays

Volunteer leave / community programs

Job summary

REA Group is building a dedicated residential ML capability from the ground up, leading a distributed team and shaping delivery across multiple residential tribes. This hybrid role includes birthday leave and purchased leave, with a strong emphasis on engineering quality and data governance across REA’s Residential portfolio.

You’ll guide architectural reviews, code discussions and pragmatic decisions on ML applicability, working closely with product managers, designers and offshore teams to

Qualifications

• Experience leading ML teams to deliver high-quality product outcomes.
• Ability to review code, discuss architecture and production trade-offs.
• Proven track record coordinating across global or distributed teams.
• Strong stakeholder management across product managers, designers and engineers.

Responsibilities

• Establish and lead a dedicated residential ML team, setting mission and standards.
• Coordinate work across residential tribes, adapting to changing priorities.
• Set expectations with distributed contractors and negotiate timelines.
• Provide technical guidance across ML, data science and data engineering.
• Decide when ML is necessary versus simpler approaches for problems.
• Design and deliver AI/ML products and data capabilities for residential use cases.

Skills

ML leadership

Distributed teams

Technical review

Stakeholder mgmt

Cloud architecture

Job description

Build REA’s dedicated residential ML capability from the ground up. Lead a distributed team and shape delivery across multiple residential tribes. Hybrid working, birthday leave and purchased leave options. We’re REA. With bold and ambitious goals, REA Group is changing the way the world experiences property. No matter where you are on your property journey, we’re here to help with every step — from finding your next home to financing it.

Where the team fits in

This role sits within Residential Advertising Value, supporting product development across REA’s Residential business. Residential is a fast-moving, high-impact part of REA, with opportunities spanning value, packaging, on-market experiences, agent workflows, selling and renting. You’ll establish a dedicated ML capability for residential, working across tribes rather than being limited to a single product area. The initial team comprises four Xi’an-based contractors, with the potential to grow as demand develops. You’ll also work closely with product managers, designers, XP teams, the AI Enrichment team and other AI teams across REA.

This is an opportunity to shape how ML is applied across residential from the ground up - building the team’s approach, ways of working and technical standards while contributing to products that matter to customers and the business.

What the role is all about

As Engineering Manager - AI, you’ll lead the development of REA’s residential ML capability and play a pivotal role in driving technical quality and delivery success across the Residential portfolio. This role combines technical leadership, delivery leadership and people leadership. Your focus will be on setting direction, creating clarity and coordinating effective delivery across a distributed team and changing product priorities. While you won’t be expected to spend most of your time implementing models, you’ll need the technical depth to review code, discuss architecture and challenge proposed solutions when a problem may not call for data science.

You’ll:

• Establish and lead a dedicated ML team for residential, shaping its mission, practices, delivery approach and engineering standards.
• Coordinate work across residential tribes, adapting to changing priorities, product managers, designers and collaborators as initiatives evolve.
• Set clear expectations for the distributed contractor team and work with product stakeholders to negotiate timelines, capacity and delivery outcomes.
• Provide technical guidance across ML, data science and data engineering, including reviewing code and identifying design, architecture or solution risks.
• Help teams make pragmatic decisions about when an ML or data science solution is appropriate — and when a simpler approach will better solve the problem.
• Guide the design and delivery of AI/ML products and data capabilities across residential use cases, including value, packaging, on-market, agent workflow, sell and rent.
• Maintain high standards across software engineering quality, ML evaluation, operational excellence, system health, data governance and engineering compliance.
• Support the development of AI-enabled product capabilities using techniques such as natural language processing, large language models, semantic search and other modern ML approaches.
• Partner with the AI Enrichment team and other AI specialists to share capability, patterns and technical expertise across REA.
• Build strong working relationships with global and offshore team members, ensuring communication, expectations and delivery remain clear.
• Raise the bar for technical judgement, team effectiveness and inclusive leadership across the Residential portfolio.

What success looks like

In this role, success will mean: Establishing a credible and effective residential ML team with clear ways of working and the foundations to scale. Enabling productive technical conversations about ML and data solutions, including recognising when a problem is not a data science problem. Coordinating effectively with product managers and designers across residential tribes as priorities, timelines and capacity change. Building trust with the Xi’an-based team and other global collaborators through clear expectations and consistent delivery leadership. Demonstrating strong capability in at least one specialist area, such as AI/ML or data governance, while uplifting technical maturity across the wider engineering community.

Who we’re looking for

You’re an experienced engineering leader with a strong technical background in machine learning, data science or data engineering. You may be an established Engineering Manager, or a Staff or Principal Engineer ready to take on team leadership and build a new capability.

You’ll also have:

• Strong conceptual and fundamental knowledge of AI and ML, with the ability to have detailed technical conversations about data, models, evaluation, architecture and production trade-offs.
• Experience leading software, data or ML teams to deliver high-quality product or API-driven outcomes.
• The technical fluency to review code, identify design or architectural flaws and provide constructive challenge, even when you are not the person implementing the solution.
• Experience working with global, offshore or distributed teams and the ability to create clarity across different locations and working styles.
• Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills, with the ability to work across multiple product tribes and build effective relationships with product managers, designers and engineering leaders.
• The judgement to assess whether an ML or data science approach is the right solution for a business or product problem.
• Experience with modern software engineering practices, cloud architecture, data platforms or ML engineering workflows.
• The ability to manage ambiguity, adapt to changing priorities and negotiate realistic timelines and capacity.

The REA experience

The physical, mental, emotional and financial health of our people is something we’ll never stop caring about. This is a place to learn and grow.

Some of our Perks & Benefits include:

• A hybrid and flexible approach to working
• Flexible leave options including, birthday leave and purchase additional leave
• Flexible parental leave offering for primary and secondary carers
• Our Because We Care program offers employees volunteering leave, community grants, matched payroll giving and our Community Café donates 100% of revenue to charity
• Hackdays so you can bring your big ideas to life

Our commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion We are committed to providing a working environment that embraces and values diversity, equity and inclusion. We believe teams with diverse ideas and experiences are more creative, more effective and fuel disruptive thinking.

We are an Australian-based digital media company with a passion for real estate. Our leading brand is Australia’s biggest property resource, realestate.com.au. We also operate the number one commercial property site, realcommercial.com.au, and have businesses that help property developers and other brands advertise with us. Whilst we live in Australia, we’ve also got ventures in Asia and North America, and have the vision of expanding our footprint further. Everything we do is driven by our purpose to ‘change the way the world experiences property’ – from product innovation to our international investments.