FreeHire

safetyculture-2

Engineering Manager

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Why join us?
We’re a global tech company, just not the kind you’re picturing.
Sure, we’ve got catered lunches, team events, cool merch, and yes... dogs in the office. But that’s not why people join.

Our team of nearly a thousand people wakes up every day to make our product and our customers’ lives better. At SafetyCulture, you’ll hear “yes, let’s give it a shot” more often than “that’s not how we do things here.”

People join because we’re building tools that make work better for the 3 billion people who keep the world moving - factory floor operators, baggage handlers, truck drivers, servers, store assistants. The ones who make things happen. We’ve got the scale and innovation you’d expect from big tech. The difference? No endless layers of sign-off. No corporate theatre. Just smart, experienced people solving real problems fast .

The scale is big. But the ownership’s personal. Every full-time team member gets equity - real skin in the game. When we grow, you do too. We’re not perfect, no company is. But this next chapter of our growth is about scaling with intelligence, not just size - fueled by operational maturity, a clear vision, and a strong focus on AI.

This is big tech impact, without the big tech ick. If that excites you more than it scares you, you’ll fit right in.

About the Role

This role exists to lead a team of engineers delivering improvements to our Inspections product — SafetyCulture's most established and revenue-generating offering. You'll keep the team healthy, the delivery moving, and the codebase in better shape than you found it, while growing as a people leader in a supportive and technically engaged environment.

Key Responsibilities

  • Own the day-to-day delivery of your engineering team: run planning, refinement, and sprint rhythms that keep work predictable and the team focused

  • Lead and develop a team of engineers through regular one-on-ones, career conversations, and coaching — creating an environment where people do their best work

  • Maintain and improve the technical health of the codebase, making pragmatic calls on legacy debt versus new investment based on real customer and business impact

  • Triage customer-reported issues and production incidents with a clear eye on ROI — distinguishing problems that need fixing from noise that doesn't

  • Contribute to technical direction, keeping yourself close enough to the work to be a credible and useful partner to your engineers as well as the product and design leadership triad

  • Spot process friction and fix it — whether that's in how the team plans, how bugs are triaged, or how engineers collaborate — without waiting to be asked

  • Build relationships beyond your immediate team, partnering with engineers, product managers, designers, and customer-facing functions across the business

    • Required Skills & Experience

    Technical Skills

  • Recent background as a software engineer, with experience working across complex, large-scale SaaS products

  • Comfortable navigating and leading work in legacy codebases: able to assess technical debt pragmatically, avoid unnecessary rewrites, and align technical priorities to product strategy

  • Able to contribute to technical direction, participate meaningfully in architectural discussions, and review code — you don't need to be shipping features, but your engineers should trust your technical judgement

  • Experienced in scoping and estimating complex features in partnership with Product, including feasibility trade-offs and high-level effort sizing

  • Understands what good looks like in a high-scale SaaS environment: endpoint performance, data integrity, release safety, and the operational discipline that keeps large customer workloads running well

    • Behavioural Skills

  • Genuinely interested in people leadership — you see coaching, career development, and team health as core to the job, not a distraction from the technical work

  • Self-directed and proactive: you notice what's not working and improve it without needing someone to point it out first

  • Pragmatic decision-maker: you weigh trade-offs clearly, move on reversible decisions quickly, and don't let perfect get in the way of better

  • Strong communicator — able to give direct, useful feedback to engineers and have honest conversations with your manager and peers about what's going well and what isn't

  • Team-oriented and relationship-driven: you invest in the people around you and build trust across teams, not just within your own

    • AI Skills

  • Actively uses AI tools as part of day-to-day work; someone who hasn't yet integrated AI tools into their workflow won't thrive here

  • Able to evaluate AI-generated code for quality and appropriateness, and has a view on where AI accelerates engineering work versus where human judgement is still essential

  • Curious about how AI tooling is evolving and willing to experiment with new approaches that improve team productivity and developer experience

    • Success Looks Like

  • At 3 months: you know your engineers well, delivery is running smoothly, and you've started building relationships outside your immediate team

  • The team's planning and triage rhythms are consistent and well-run — sprint ceremonies happen, refinement is useful, and bug triage is fast and well-reasoned

  • You've identified at least one process or technical pain point and driven a tangible improvement, without being directed to do so

  • Engineers on your team feel supported, have clarity on their development, and are engaged — reflected in team health signals and how they talk about their work

  • You're a trusted partner to your senior engineering manager, taking on delegated work effectively and escalating only when it genuinely needs escalation

    • What You Need to Know

  • Office/in-person: This role is based in our Sydney office. In-office attendance 2-3 days per week is expected.

  • On-call: The Inspections product supports customers at significant scale — some level of production awareness and availability out of hours for high-severity incidents is part of the role.

    • More than a job

  • Equity with high growth potential, and a competitive salary
  • Flexible working arrangements
  • Access to professional and personal training and development opportunities
  • Hackathons, Workshops, Lunch & Learns
  • In-house Culinary Crew serving up daily breakfast, lunch and snacks
  • Barista coffee machine, craft beer on tap, boutique wines and a range of non-alcoholic beverages
  • Wellbeing initiatives such as subsidised fitness programs, EAP services and generous parental leave policy
  • Quarterly celebrations and team events
  • On-site gym, table tennis, board games, books library, and pet-friendly offices
    • We’re committed to building inclusive teams and cultivating a sense of belonging so our people can bring their whole authentic selves to work each day. We seek to make reasonable adjustments throughout our recruitment process to create an even playing field for all candidates. Thanks to the tireless efforts of the entire SafetyCulture team we’ve built an incredible culture which has seen us recognised as a Best Place to Work in Australia, the US and the UK .

    Even if you don't meet every requirement listed in the ad, please consider applying for this role. We prioritise inclusion and value individuals with potential over a checklist of qualifications. Don't rule yourself out, hit that apply button if this job resonates with you.

    You can find out more about life at SafetyCulture via Youtube, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

    To all recruitment agencies, we do not accept resumes or partnership opportunities. Please do not forward resumes to SafetyCulture or any of our employees. We are not responsible for any fees associated with unsolicited resumes.