Software Engineering Manager

About Lorikeet

Lorikeet is the most powerful customer support AI for complex businesses like fintechs, healthtechs, marketplaces and delivery services.

We’re doing this by building ground up from the premise that most support responses should be automated with transparent, customizable AI, and that support teams should spend their time managing automation and engaging with complex cases, not grinding through high volumes of simple tickets. Once teams are freed from reactive support, we want to help them tackle what’s next: providing personalized concierge services to their customers.

To deliver this combination of powerful AI systems and well designed tooling we’re leveraging Jamie’s experience as an early member of Google’s generative AI team and Steve’s experience building for operational teams at Stripe, as well as the experience of our team who’ve joined us from places like Stripe, Canva, Atlassian, Dropbox and Dovetail.

We are growing fast, have paying customers, real revenue, an exciting roadmap and a strong sales pipeline. We’ve raised over USD 50m from leading VCs and angel investors, including QED, Blackbird, Square Peg, Claire Hughes Johnson (ex Stripe COO), Cristina Cordova (Linear COO), Bob Van Winden (Stripe Head of Support), and Cos Nicolaescu (Brex CTO).

Our global customers include:

• The largest telehealth company in Australia,

• The largest bank for teens in the US,

• One of the largest NFT marketplaces by trading volume,

• The leading virtual specialty-care platform in the US,

• One of the largest flexible rent-payment platforms in the US,

• One of the largest Web3 gaming companies

… and a handful of other enterprise customers with over 1 million support tickets a year.

What’s unique about this opportunity?

• Warm, mature, flexible, in-office culture. Low ego, high trust team. No tolerance for ‘talented jerks’. We value working together in-office as the default in our (very nice!) Surry Hills office. We embrace a) working efficiently, and b) working flexible hours to fit in life priorities outside of work. We’re committed to building a diverse team and really encourage folks from underrepresented backgrounds to reach out - we value user obsession and eagerness to learn over traditional credentials.

• High pay, high expectations, high performance. We aim to match unicorn / scale up pay at base salary and offer a potentially life-changing equity stake in the business. Our team gets the same monthly updates we send to our investors because they’re investors and owners too.

• On the technical cutting edge. With our users we’re defining the platform that companies use to build universal concierges for their customers. No one has figured out what the UI/UX, capabilities and data models of an AI first company are - it’s white space for us to invent. The AI agent problems we’re solving are beyond the cutting edge at the biggest research labs. We’re building on a modern tech stack, with Typescript, React/Remix, PrismaORM, NestJS and some Python sprinkled in. Knowledge of that stack is nice, but we know good engineers will pick up new languages.

• No nonsense recruitment process. The process is: 1) informal chats with Amy and Jamie to hear our pitch and understand your interests and goals, 2) a ~two day paid work trial where you come in and ship with us. There’s no better way for each of us to figure out if we like working together than to work together!

About the role and you

Our engineering team is growing rapidly and we’re looking for an Engineering Manager to team up with our Head of Engineering to lead the talented folks responsible for our products and systems. You’ll work closely with the leadership team in building ambitious systems without compromising on clarity, culture, or care. We ship fast, we learn fast, and we own the outcomes.

This is a hands-on, high-context role that blends technical leadership with inclusive, people-first management and talent development. You’ll guide engineers across varying levels of experience, from high-potential juniors to deeply experienced seniors, all while maintaining thoughtful velocity and keeping the engineering bar high.

What you'll do

• Shape technical direction alongside the team - work with engineers to translate customer needs into technical solutions, balancing immediate business needs with long-term system health

• Partner across the company to stay connected to customer impact - collaborate with sales, customer success, and product to understand what's working (and what isn't), then help your team prioritize accordingly

• Grow engineers through hands-on collaboration - mentor through pairing, code reviews, and working side-by-side on challenging problems, helping people level up while shipping features customers love

• Build our talent pipeline thoughtfully - own hiring and onboarding new engineers, creating career paths that reward both technical growth and understanding customer needs

• Contribute directly to critical initiatives when needed - step into customer escalations, technical architecture decisions, or cross-functional projects to support business objectives beyond traditional management duties

• Create an engineering culture grounded in customer outcomes - ensure the team understands how their technical decisions impact business results and customer satisfaction

• Make pragmatic technical tradeoffs with the team - collaborate on balancing feature velocity, technical debt, and system reliability based on what the business actually needs

The right candidate

We’re in search of an engineering manager who has experience working in a fast paced environment, even if in an unofficial capacity. You’d have led high-trust and high-outout teams, balancing business needs with a people first mindset.

This role is ideal for someone who is (1) deeply interested in AI, (2) is excited to mentor and develop engineers of varying skill levels (3) is energized by operating at the nexus of the technical implementation of AI and ensuring customer success.

You might be a fit if you:

• Have 2- 4 years of experience as an engineering people manager and 7+ years of experience working in a top tier engineering organisation, and are passionate about growing people in a continually changing environment

• Are comfortable across the stack and are excited to lead ambitious, ambiguous projects that involve strong technical decision-making, effective implementation, and good product and design instincts

• Know how to mentor engineers at different points in their career, from early-career hires to seasoned ICs

• Have demonstrated experience hiring talented engineers in a competitive market, in addition to experience building onboarding paths, promotion rubrics, and team rituals that are inclusive and make people better

• Care about both systems design and human design; how your team operates is as important as the quality of what it ships

• Are comfortable navigating ambiguous, fast-moving, global environments

• Know how to balance day-to-day urgency with strategic, long-term thinking

If you don't quite match this and are from an under-represented background we strongly encourage you to reach out. We know first hand that diverse teams are higher performing and are proud that our team reflects a broad spectrum of identities and lived experiences.