Platform Engineering Manager

Company Description
Established in 1988, Rest is one of Australia’s largest profit-to-member superannuation funds.
We support more than 1.9 million members, with around $70 billion of funds under management and are recognised as a responsible investment leader*. We believe when members understand and engage with their super, they’re more likely to get a better retirement outcome.
Everything we do at Rest is underpinned by our values and behaviours, we want to Be Daring, Keep it Simple, Take Action and Have Grit. To put it simply we want our people to thrive and love the work they do.
PLEASE NOTE - We will be in touch with successful candidates from the 8th of January 2024.
Job Description
The Platform Engineering Manager will oversee and lead the team responsible for developing, maintaining, and optimising Rest’s API and Digital platforms, ensuring APIs and digital capabilities meet business objectives, security standards, and scalability requirements. The Platform Engineering Manager plays a crucial role in providing automated capabilities to streamline development and operation of APIs by implementing tools and processes that facilitate API creation, testing, documentation, monitoring, scaling, reliability, and performance.
Key Accountabilities/Responsibilities

• Develop, implement, document, and execute our strategic vision and set technical direction of our API platform. Set development standards, best practices and guidelines for API development, performance, and operations.
• Collaborate closely with solution architects, technical product owner and engineers to define scalable, reliable, and efficient APIs that meet business needs.
• Manage a team of engineers, providing guidance, mentorship, goals and performance review.
• Work closely with product managers to ensure APIs are integrated seamlessly into products and services.
• Establish and enforce coding standards, testing practices, and documentation guidelines to ensure APIs are robust, well-tested, and well-documented to minimise the risk of bugs and vulnerabilities.
• Oversee the entire API lifecycle, including versioning, deprecation, and sunsetting of APIs.
• Drive initiatives to introduce observability, monitoring and optimization of API performance, stability, and reliability to handle increased traffic and usage, proactively addressing bottlenecks and issues.
• Implement security best practices in the SDLC of APIs to protect sensitive data, ensure compliance with regulators standards, and manage APIs access and authentication.
• Oversee the release process for APIs in every stage. Have contingency plans in place to address potential deployment failures or disruptions. Drive culture of zero-downtime deployments.
• Regularly update leadership and other technical stakeholders on the achievements, risks control plans and security issues remediation related to our API platform.
• Respond to and resolve technical issues, outages, and incidents affecting API platform promptly. Collaborate with relevant teams to diagnose and mitigate problems.
• Identify, assess, and prioritise risks associated with API development, deployment, and maintenance, and develop proactive strategies and controls to mitigate these risks.
• Stay updated on industry trends, emerging technologies, and best practices related to APIs. Continuously seek opportunities to improve processes, enhance security, and optimise costs.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field.
• Cloud-specific certifications are highly valuable (AWS Solution Architect, Develop, SysOps, etc.).

Required experience, understanding or credentials including:

• 5+ years of technical people leadership, coaching, goal setting, making sound decisions and delivering outcomes on technical projects
• In-depth understanding of API design principles, RESTful architecture, and API development technologies
• Experience with API gateway and management tools (AWS API Gateway, Kong, etc.)
• Proficiency in API security best practices, authentication mechanisms (OAuth, JWT) and compliance standards relevant to financial services industry.
• Understanding of DevOps practices and CI/CD pipelines.
• Proven experience implementing security controls in all stages of the Software Development Cycle.
• Experience with serverless architectures and the deployment of serverless APIs using AWS CDK.
• Experience with AWS services commonly used for API development (CloudFront, API Gateway, Lambda, Dynamo, SQS/SNS, EC2, ELB, etc.)
• Experience with observability platforms and solutions like AWS X-Ray, Datadog, Splunk, or ELK Stack. Understanding of best practices for creating custom metrics and dashboards to gain insights into platform performance and stability.
• Excellent communication skills to effectively interact with cross-functional teams, stakeholders, and executives.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills to diagnose and resolve technical issues.
• Proven ability to quickly troubleshoot and resolve issues related to API performance, security, and scalability.

Additional Information
Benefits
Our benefits have been designed so you can tailor your experience with us and include:

• Personal and professional development opportunities
• Flexible, hybrid working – work to suit your lifestyle (must be based in Australia)
• Purchase leave scheme and gender neutral 16 weeks paid parental leave
• Super Contribution Continuation for 12 Months of parental leave
• Meeting free breaks (Rest Stops)
• Income Protection Insurance
• Rest Excellence awards (peer recognition awards based on Rest’s values and behaviours)

If you share our values, believe you can help make a difference for our members and want to be part of a leading superannuation fund with a Super culture, please click Apply Now.
Rest is committed to creating a flexible work environment and culture that embraces diversity, equity, and inclusion - where people feel welcome, safe to be themselves and inspired to do their best.
We value the different backgrounds, lived experiences and abilities our diverse team brings. We welcome and encourage applications from candidates of all ages, cultural backgrounds, faiths, gender identities, sexual orientations and thinking styles. This includes people with disability, neurodiverse individuals, Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander peoples and those with disrupted work history due to career or other breaks.
Please note only people with the right to work in Australia will be considered.
*Funds under management as at 31 December 2022. Rest is recognised as a by the Responsible Investment Association Australia (RIAA) in its Responsible Investment Benchmark Report 2022.
Rest will review applications prior to the closing date and may close the role earlier