Head Of Engineering - Commercial Product

Nine is Australia’s largest locally owned media company – the home of Australia’s most trusted and loved brands spanning News, Sport, Lifestyle, and Entertainment. We pride ourselves on creating the best content, accessed by consumers when and how they want – across Publishing, Broadcasting and Digital.

Nine’s assets include the 9Network, major mastheads such as The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review, radio stations 2GB, 3AW, 4BC and 6PR, digital properties such as nine.com.au, 9Now, 9Honey, Pedestrian.TV, Drive, subscription video platform Stan and a majority investment in Domain Group.

Our Purpose: We shape culture by sparking conversations, challenging perspectives, and entertaining our communities.

We bring people together by celebrating the big occasions and connecting the everyday moments. Australia belongs here. We bring our purpose to life via three shared values: We walk the talk, turn over every stone and keep it human.

The Commercial Products team manages a fleet of custom-built systems and third party product integrations  that perform critical functions for our Sales Operations, Traffic, Finance, Programming and Presentation teams, which make it possible for us to sell and traffic ads into our linear broadcasts schedules. In other words, our systems are core business critical systems that manage all revenue associated with broadcast.

You’ll be leading an organisation made up of 4 squads, each with its own engineering manager, software engineers, quality engineers, and iteration manager. The immediate focus of the role will be on the continued improvement and scalability/reliability of existing systems, longer term you’ll contribute to building the next-gen of Nine’s sales, advertising management, and revenue systems. 

At Nine Technology we strive for People and Engineering excellence and culture in the way we deliver on our work. As a senior technology leader you’ll have the opportunity to not only lead your teams in the way they effectively operate and deliver but you’ll be a leader helping Nine to continuously evolve and grow its Product and Engineering culture and capabilities. 

Role responsibilities

• Ensure scope and architectural directions are clear for products and ensure smooth roll-out and integration of projects
• Lead a technical team, working to guide and grow technically strong individuals, being able to give them acute feedback to help them in their technical challenges, whilst still giving them freedom to innovate their own ideas
• Work with engineering leadership to identify opportunities to improve practices and processes around engineering and delivery, and assist with the implementation and upkeep of these practices
• Work closely with Product Management on continuous improvements to existing systems, with a focus on improved reliability, performance, and efficiency.
• Lead development and maintain a strategy to deliver on business goals via system improvements, new functionality and platforms.
• Being involved and helping to coach and mentor teams delivering in Agile
• Ability to plan, organise and lead teams to deliver consistently on project and release commitments.
• Manage 3rd party partners, commercials, contracts and budgets. Ensure contract commitments are met.
• Ability to manage key senior business stakeholder relationships to ensure a  successful technology partnership
• Support development of business cases to further business improvements
• Responsible for developing technology investments business cases. 
• Work with engineering leadership to identify opportunities to improve practices and processes around engineering and delivery, and assist with the implementation and upkeep of these practices
• Help develop and maintain a strategy to deliver on business goals via system improvements and new functionality
• Support production systems - we believe in 'you build it, you support it'.
• Manage overall team and vendor budgets to target.

Essential qualifications, experience & skills:

• Prior experience leading engineering teams with multiple squads
• Knowledge of strategic frameworks including OKRs and other outcome-lead performance frameworks
• Effective communication abilities
• Strong capabilities in guiding ongoing improvements to Ways of Working and team practices
• Excellent knowledge of DevOps principles and experience with effective implementation in an environment with low DevOps maturity
• Contract and budget management
• Strategy development
• Build and operate large scale, high transactional systems experience
• Enterprise application development experience

Desirable qualifications, experience & skills:

• Industry experience with broadcast or streaming media beneficial but not required
• Cloud and on premise infrastructure deployment and planning experience

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion:

At Nine, we are committed to fostering a workforce that embraces all aspects of diversity and inclusion and where practices are equitable to ensure our people experience a sense of belonging. From day one, you'll be encouraged to bring your whole self to work and will be supported to perform at your best. Should you require any adjustments to the recruitment process in order to equitably participate, we encourage you to advise us at the time of application.

We encourage applications from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people with disabilities, and of all ages, nationalities, backgrounds and cultures.

Disclaimer: Nine does not accept unsolicited agency resumes. Nine is not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.