Tech Lead

Pair People Pty Limited; Sydney; On-site; AUD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Pair People Pty Limited in Sydney is seeking a versatile engineering leader to guide a cross-functional squad. You’ll own the full software lifecycle from planning to production support, mentor engineers, and write and review code alongside the team, balancing people leadership with technical hands-on work.

You’ll partner with Product and Design, drive architecture decisions, scale systems, improve delivery practices, and help build a high-performing team, while maintaining end‑to‑end ownership

Qualifications

• Leadership experience in product-focused software environments.
• Hands-on production coding experience.
• Track record designing and shipping scalable systems.
• End-to-end ownership of software in production.
• Experience working in cross-functional squads with Product and Design.

Responsibilities

• Lead and develop engineers in a product-focused software environment.
• Stay hands-on: write and review code and set technical standards.
• Lead delivery across multiple initiatives with Engineering, Product and Design.
• Own delivery across the full SDLC from planning to support.
• Make architecture and infrastructure decisions balancing speed, scale, and cost.

Skills

People leadership

Hands-on coding

System design

Cloud infrastructure

CI/CD

Cross-functional collaboration

Job description

You'll lead a cross-functional squad through several concurrent initiatives, working with Product and Design as equal partners. You'll own the full software lifecycle from planning to production support, and you'll make the architectural calls for your squad's systems without needing sign-off. This role leans more toward people leadership than a typical tech lead. You'll mentor, performance-manage and develop the engineers in your squad, while staying hands-on and writing and reviewing code alongside them.

Key responsibilities

• Lead and develop the engineers in your squad: mentoring, performance management, career growth and the difficult conversations that come with leading people.
• Stay on the tools: write and review code, and set the technical standard for the squad.
• Lead the delivery of multiple initiatives across Engineering, Product and Design.
• Own delivery across the full software development lifecycle, from planning through to release and support.
• Make architecture and infrastructure decisions for your squad's systems, balancing speed, scalability, reliability and cost, and influence architecture across the wider team.
• Support hiring and help build a high-performing team.
• Improve engineering practices, tooling and processes where they create meaningful leverage.
• Partner with Product and leadership to identify technology opportunities that improve customer and business outcomes.
• Contribute to on-call support and help strengthen production reliability.

About you

• Real experience leading and developing engineers in a product-focused software environment, including performance management and supporting people through challenges.
• Recent hands-on experience writing and reviewing production code.
• A track record of designing and shipping scalable systems, and the ability to talk through the trade-offs you made.
• End-to-end ownership of software in production, not just building and handing over.
• Experience working in cross-functional squads where Product and Design are peers.
• Strong knowledge of modern cloud infrastructure, CI/CD and software delivery practices.
• The ability to make pragmatic trade-offs across quality, speed, cost and complexity.
• Strong cross-functional communication and stakeholder management skills.

About us

My client is one of Australia's fastest-growing tech scale-ups, backed by leading Australian investors. They use simple, accessible technology to help everyday Australians handle some of the most important decisions in adult life, and their product is used by tens of thousands of people every year.

Engineers are involved early, shaping solutions rather than just implementing them, and own their work end to end through to production.

Dedicated engineering weeks for developer experience and tech debt.

Quarterly AI hackathons, weekly demos and learning sessions.

A product that genuinely matters to the people who use it.