Vice President of Engineering

Figured; Auckland; Hybrid; NZD 150,000 - 220,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading cloud-based SaaS company in New Zealand is seeking a visionary technology leader to define and drive AI integration within its engineering team. This role emphasizes operational delivery, strategic leadership, and collaboration across teams to embed AI solutions significantly into products. The ideal candidate will possess extensive technical leadership experience, a hands-on approach, and a passion for innovation within a fast-paced environment. Enjoy a flexible work culture, significant professional development opportunities, and a generous leave package accentuating well-being and growth.

Benefits

25 days annual leave

Subsidised health insurance

Dedicated growth & development fund

Qualifications

• Extensive technical leadership experience in a cloud-based SaaS environment.
• Strong partnership capability with product and business teams.
• Hands-on approach to leading and inspiring teams.

Responsibilities

• Define and champion the technical vision for AI-powered solutions.
• Lead day-to-day operations of high-performing engineering teams.
• Mentor and empower the engineering team to foster a culture of high performance.

Skills

Leadership

AI Integration

SaaS Expertise

Collaboration

Job description

About Figured

At Figured, we're on a mission to help farmers and their financial advisors run more profitable and sustainable operations both now and for future generations. Founded in New Zealand 11 years ago, our cloud-based SaaS platform now supports over 35,000 farming operations across New Zealand, Australia, UK and North America.

We're actively redefining how farmers and their advisors manage finances by strategically integrating AI at every level. No AI sprinkles or chasing AI hype around here; it's about expanding the impact we deliver to our customers while also building a future-fit workforce. This is a unique opportunity to lead an exceptional engineering team and shape the technical vision of a company with significant growth and impact.

The gig

We are looking for a visionary technology leader with a strong drive for innovation to lead our high-performing engineering team known for its technical chops, fast delivery, and strong partnership with product and business. A key focus for this role will be to embed AI within the Figured product, aligning with our strategy of "Embedded Advisory Intelligence" and ensuring our engineering practices remain adaptive through the deployment of AI capabilities within the Engineering function itself.

Key responsibilities include:

• Strategic & Technical Leadership: Define and champion our technical vision, with a strong emphasis on building impactful AI powered solutions for our customers. You'll own the key decisions regarding the technology stack that supports both our product and data strategies, and of course you'll be the voice of engineering within the business
• Operational Delivery: Lead the day-to-day operations of our autonomous and high-performing engineering teams (focus ranging from feature development, DevOps and Data Engineering), ensuring continuous delivery of impactful features for our customers across our markets
• People and Culture Leadership: Mentor, inspire, and empower a world-class team, fostering a culture of high-performance, collaboration and innovation
• Cross functional Collaboration and Leadership: Seamlessly align engineering efforts with our product vision and broader business objectives by working hand-in-hand with Product, Delivery, and Data Science teams as well as our go to market teams
• Engineering AI Strategy: drive the engineering vision that supports the integration of intelligent, AI-first solutions into our platform. Guide the expansion of our engineering capability around existing and future tools like Vertex AI, Claude, LangChain, and Python within a modern GCP-powered stack
  
  

Who Are You?

This isn't your first rodeo; the ideal candidate brings extensive technical leadership and strong partnership with the business, preferably within a modern, cloud-based SaaS software environment. Your visionary leadership and growth mindset enable you to effectively lead people and influence change. You adopt a pragmatic, hands-on approach, leading from the front to inspire and motivate your team.

You are a kid in a candy store when it comes to AI. You see its potential, having moved beyond dabbling and preferably to building practical, complex solutions. You see beyond the hype and are excited by the potential to lead a progressive, talent-dense engineering team into this future of product engineering.

Why Join Us?

Figured is well positioned within an AI world. We have a rich data set within a resilient vertical, strong Board sponsorship, a supportive leadership team and a talented, fast-learning team and a growth-orientated culture that prioritises our customer impact and people's future in this industry.

In addition, we offer:

• Fast-Paced & Dynamic: Say goodbye to red tape. We operate with flexibility, making decisions quickly and moving with purpose
• Future-Focused AI: Work at the cutting edge of AI, integrating it into everything we do, not just as an add-on and hype
• Exceptional Team: Join a passionate, collaborative, and highly talented group of humans who enjoy an informal group dynamic and a genuine social life together, not a 'social committee
• Flexibility: We prioritise your impact over where and how you work, whilst we're hybrid, leaders at Figured value and drive in-person connections.
• Wellbeing: Benefit from extra leave with 25 days off per year and subsidised health insurance (Wellbeing Two) with Southern Cross
• Personal Development: We support curiosity and professional development by providing a dedicated growth & development fund for you to use as you choose (in conjunction to internal programmes)
  
  

We value continuous learning at Figured, so even if you don't tick all the boxes but strongly believe you'll be a great fit for this role we encourage you to apply. Please submit a compelling cover letter to add more relevancy to your application.