Software Engineering Manager

Metrea; City of Brisbane; On-site; AUD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Private Health Insurance

Generous PTO

Annual incentive plan

Paid parental leave

Life and TPD insurance

Income Protection Insurance

Employee Assistance Program

Novated Car Leasing

Job summary

Metrea is seeking an Engineering Manager to lead the geospatial data processing and visualisation team in Australia. You will drive delivery, mentor engineers, and shape engineering practices in a fast-growing, mission-focused environment.

Candidates should bring a proven track record in geospatial software leadership, strong communication, and the ability to navigate a matrix organisation with agile practices, while pursuing continual team growth and knowledge sharing.

Qualifications

• Experience leading geospatial software teams.
• Strong communication and mentorship skills.
• Experience employing agile methodologies in software development within a matrix organisation.
• Ability to obtain and maintain an NV1 AGSVA security clearance.

Responsibilities

• Own delivery outcomes for the team; drive the team to meet delivery timelines while balancing sustainability, quality, and team wellbeing.
• Mentor, coach, and lead a team of engineers, taking responsibility for their career and personal development.
• Ensure work is well planned, resourced, and broken down into deliverable increments.
• Track progress, surface risks early, and drive mitigation actions.
• Actively remove blockers, dependencies, and organisational friction that slow the team down.
• Balance delivery speed with sustainability, quality, and team wellbeing.
• Conduct regular catch-ups and check-ins with the team to help support day-to-day activities.
• Help align team efforts with broader strategic goals and plan for future resource requirements.
• Develop and maintain a deep relationship with the team’s Tech Lead and Product Manager.
• Collaborate with other Engineering Leaders to improve processes, code quality, release management and documentation.
• Support the recruitment process and take responsibility for onboarding and integrating new teammates.

Skills

Geospatial data

People management

Agile

Engineering leadership

Communication

Job description

Company Overview

Metrea delivers effects-as-a-service to national security partners across five domains and more than a dozen mission areas. These include airborne ISR, electronic warfare, secure communications, aerial refuelling, special air missions, aerial firefighting, and advanced simulation. We own the whole stack: designing, building, and operating turnkey capabilities that give our partners decisive, asymmetric advantage against rapidly evolving threats.

Our operating model is built around three interlocking pillars. The Support Groups provide a global shared‑service – spanning people, finance, platform, operations, legal, and engagement. This frees up our Core Groups, who develop and own mission capabilities end‑to‑end, to focus entirely on delivery. The Market Groups apply a regional lens, ensuring that our agile and adaptable capabilities remain aligned to the wicked problems that matter most to our partners across the Americas, EMEA, and Asia‑Pacific. At the heart of our model is a simple but powerful idea: be a true partner with skin in the game. Our partners need effects, not just equipment. By owning the full stack – from the lab to the field – we are able to drive a continuous cycle of innovation that keeps our partners ahead. It's a fast‑moving, intellectually demanding environment where talented people are given real responsibility, work on problems that matter, and contribute to an enterprise that is growing quickly and deliberately.

Group Overview – Australia

Metrea is actively building its presence in Australia as part of a deliberate, globally coordinated expansion into the Asia‑Pacific region. Our Asia‑Pacific Market Group, headquartered in Brisbane with an additional office in Perth, is the enterprise's dedicated regional interface — connecting Australia's national security community with Metrea's full suite of capabilities across three core domains: Aerospace, Electromagnetic & Cyber, and Digital & Synthetic. Metrea is now bringing that same depth of mission expertise and proven operating model to Australia. Underpinning these capabilities is a global network of Support Groups spanning people, finance, platform, operations, legal, and engagement — ensuring that as we grow in Australia, we do so with the full weight of an established global enterprise behind us.

Position Summary

We are looking for an Engineering Manager to provide leadership for the geospatial data processing and visualisations team. Candidates should have knowledge and experience of best practices across the software development lifecycle, and excellent people‑management skills. They can be relied upon to build and maintain an engineering culture that is sustainably professional and positive, in which high‑performing engineers can grow and thrive. Metrea is a people‑first organisation and candidates should have strong communication skills and the desire to proactively elevate their team through continuous knowledge sharing, collaboration, feedback, and mentorship.

What You'll Do

• Own delivery outcomes for the team; drive the team to meet delivery timelines while balancing sustainability, quality, and team wellbeing.
• Mentor, coach, and lead a team of highly talented engineers, taking responsibility for their career and personal development.
• Ensure work is well planned, resourced, and broken down into deliverable increments.
• Track progress, surface risks early, and drive mitigation actions.
• Actively remove blockers, dependencies, and organisational friction that slow the team down.
• Balance delivery speed with sustainability, quality, and team wellbeing.
• Conduct regular catch‑ups and check‑ins with the team to help support their day‑to‑day engineering activities.
• Help align team efforts with the broader strategic goals of the organisation, helping to plan for future resource requirements and technology adoption.
• Develop and maintain a deep relationship with the team’s Tech Lead and Product Manager to ensure alignment and delivery.
• Collaborate with other Engineering Leaders across the business to improve engineering processes, code quality, release management and documentation.
• Support the recruitment process and take responsibility for onboarding and integrating new teammates.

What You Bring

• Experience in engineering management, having previously mentored and helped develop the careers of software engineers.
• Great interpersonal skills, servant‑leadership mindset, and the ability to confidently communicate with others, conveying technical content clearly and articulately to non‑technical team members.
• Experience employing agile methodologies in software development processes while working in a matrix organisation to help support the team establish and develop their ways of working.
• Experience leading teams in fast‑growing companies where you play a part in shaping ways of working rather than following pre‑defined ones.
• A deep passion for personal development with a drive to constantly learn and further professional knowledge.
• Strong organisational skills with the ability to work independently while planning, prioritising and managing your workload.

Additional Eligibility Qualifications

• Experience working on geospatial visualisation products.
• Prior experience working with defence contracts is a plus.
• Ability to obtain and maintain an NV1 AGSVA security clearance.

Benefits

• Private Health Insurance
• Generous PTO
• Annual incentive plan
• Paid parental leave
• Life and TPD insurance
• Income Protection Insurance
• Employee Assistance Program
• Novated Car Leasing

Inclusion Statement

We are committed to building a team that reflects a broad range of backgrounds, experiences and perspectives. We welcome applications from all qualified candidates and make hiring decisions based on capability, potential and alignment with our values. If you require any adjustments throughout the recruitment process, please let us know.

Our Firmware

At Metrea, our single core value is Rooted in Humility, and our four cornerstone attributes are Entrepreneurial, Systematic, Discerning, and Over‑Deliver. These form what we call our Teammate Firmware. Just like technical firmware connects software and hardware, our Firmware is the constant interface between our mission and our people. It defines how we show up, how we work together, and how we solve complex problems. Our team Firmware creates a web‑like, hyper‑collaborative, dynamically hierarchical way of working that helps us adapt quickly, communicate openly, and distribute decision‑making to where expertise actually lives. It enables groups to self‑organise around hard problems, shift fluidly as priorities evolve, and operate with the trust, curiosity, and discipline required in a complex mission space. This foundation allows us to deliver elegant, effective solutions and uphold our purpose: protecting our precious inheritance.