Engineering Manager - Data

How you’ll make an impact

• As an Engineering Manager you’ll be responsible for building great engineering teams by:
• Attracting, recruiting and retaining capable individuals, building on and complementing the diversity of our teams.
• Championing and driving processes and practices that make it possible for engineers to get great work done, while promoting a safe environment for people to experiment and learn.
• Role-modelling exemplary leadership, supporting and growing the next generation of engineering leaders at Xero.

What you’ll do

• Hands on coding including troubleshooting, proofs of concept, and core project contributions
• As a leader of leaders (People/Team Leads), you will be a coach and advisor to your direct reports and act as an escalation point for them .
• You will cultivate a high performance team by providing input, guidance and corrective actions as necessary.
• You will continuously align your team with Xero’s objectives and deliverables e.g. The Quarterly Roadmap.
• Have authentic conversations around your peoples’ wellbeing, capabilities and engagement.
• Empower your direct reports and teams to make decisions when fast, decentralized decision-making is appropriate to reduce delays, make improvements, enable faster feedback and more innovative solutions.
• Foster and support the growth of a culture of continuous empathy towards our stakeholders among your team.
• Remain up to date with relevant technology changes and trends and continually grow a knowledge of how they may benefit Xero
• Grow the talent in the team by identifying skill gaps and ensure there is a clear strategy to close those gaps (which might include upskilling, reassigning or hiring team members).
• Own the hiring process for engineers within your product group and make improvements that ensure we attract and hire great technical talent.
• Actively measure, monitor, and continuously improve the performance and reliability of data products you are responsible for.
• Ensure effective operational support for your products, consistently meeting SLOs and complying with engineering and security standards.
• Coach the team on Agile software engineering practices, ensuring your team's technical practices are continuously improved to deliver high-quality data products that are fit for purpose, robust and scalable.
• Actively contribute to the product’s architectural best practices and vision and ensure the team's work is in line with this vision.
• Ensure your team aligns to Xero Data Product and Xero Engineering Standards eg: compliance and security requirements in the Path to Production Standard, modelling and data movement best practices, etc.
• Ensure cross-team dependencies are effectively coordinated and managed.
• Work closely with colleagues from other disciplines to continually deliver quality data products that solve real customer problems.

Success looks like

• Engineering teams are able to deliver better quality data products, faster.
• Your team demonstrates continuous improvement in iterative deployments and having changes implemented/tested/delivered.
• Team deliverables are delivered on time/as expected, making a measurable impact to the Initiatives which the work enables.
• Engineering teams are unblocked, supported, and accelerated in their adoption of DataOps tools and practices, through pairing, mentoring, coaching, and collaboration.
• Your team culture is positive, there's strong collaboration, sharing of knowledge and regular cadences of constructive feedback.
• Your team deeply understands the data products they own and take responsibility for their operational health.
• Your reports:Are aware of opportunities to work with wider Xero communities and groups to foster consistent practice, breakdown silos and share local learning globally.
• Actively participate and contribute to Communities of Practice, sharing learnings, advocating for participation with their team and model a culture of sharing, inclusion and continuous improvement.

What you’ll bring with you

• Coach & mentor - able to offer the right knowledge, at the right time in the right way - understanding why and how people learn.
• Growth mindset - Understand that competency is not fixed but is enhanced through dedication and hard work. Demonstrate a love of learning and resilience to adversity that is essential for great accomplishment.
• Decentralisation - Able to devolve responsibility appropriately i.e. empower others to make decisions when fast, decentralised decision-making is appropriate.
• High EQ - Self aware, self regulated, motivated and empathetic, with great interpersonal skills
• Leadership - Creates space for innovation and learning to happen within the teams.
• Demonstrates honesty and integrity. Provides objectives and goals with loose guidelines/directions. Clearly communicates expectations. Has an open mind and the flexibility to change opinions. Develops and supports others.
• Leading/living the vision & values - Builds and fosters an inclusive and positive team culture. Keeps the team’s vision and values at the forefront of decision-making and actions. Communicates and helps others understand the importance of the vision and values. Translates the vision and values into day-to-day activities and behaviours.
• People Leadership- Collaboratively works with direct reports to set meaningful performance objectives to identify the behaviours, knowledge and skills required to achieve goals Addresses performance issues.
• Stakeholder Engagement - positively engages with stakeholders to establish an overall collaborative relationship and aligned vision.
• Previous experience managing data specialist teams and proven track record at building and maintaining good team culture.
• Excellent grasp of modern data product development practices and lifecycle.
• Proven ability to balance the needs of the individual with the needs of the business.
• Proven ability to navigate areas of conflict in an open, positive and proactive way.
• Ability to coach and mentor more junior Engineering Managers.
• Strong incident management experience and knowledge.