Zendesk is looking for an Engineering Manager to lead the Core Services team responsible for high-scale distributed systems that power millions of customer connections daily. You will drive platform modernization, AIOps integration, and operational excellence.
What You'll Do
- Mentor a cross-functional team of engineers, fostering a culture of high ownership and psychological safety.
- Define the technical roadmap for platform modernisation (Orchestration, Data Delivery, Auth) while balancing 'keeping the lights on' with aggressive innovation.
- Establish deployment patterns for platform-facing models, focusing on embeddings, ranking, and observability to reduce manual toil.
- Partner with PMs to ship predictably, using DORA metrics and error budgets to maintain a world-class delivery cadence.
- Champion modern CI/CD, canary deployments, and robust observability to ensure our systems are as resilient as they are scalable.
What We're Looking For
- 2+ years of direct experience managing software teams in a production environment.
- 5+ years of hands-on experience with complex, high-throughput distributed systems (ideally Ruby, Java, or Scala).
- Deep familiarity with AWS, Kubernetes, and modern CI/CD (GitHub Actions).
- A strong interest or experience in AIOps or MLOps.
- The ability to translate complex technical strategy into a compelling narrative for stakeholders and your team alike.
Nice to Have
- Experience in a high-scale SaaS environment.
- Direct experience with SageMaker, MLflow, or vector search architectures.
- A track record of leading major re-architecture initiatives that significantly reduced costs or improved developer velocity.
Technical Stack
- Ruby, Java, Scala
- AWS, Kubernetes
- GitHub Actions
Team & Environment
The Core Services team is based in Melbourne.
Benefits & Compensation
- Hybrid work model
- Competitive pay
Work Mode
This is a hybrid position based in Melbourne.
Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer committed to fostering global diversity, equity, & inclusion, and considers all applicants without regard to protected characteristics. Reasonable accommodations are available.
