Senior Engineering Lead (Risk Detections) at Auror

Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand -

Full Time

Start Date

Immediate

Expiry Date

14 Jul, 26

Salary

201250.0

Posted On

15 Apr, 26

Experience

10 year(s) or above

Remote Job

Yes

Telecommute

Yes

Sponsor Visa

Skills

C#, .NET Core, React, TypeScript, Cloud-native architectures, Engineering leadership, Team management, Strategic planning, Technical communication, AI integration, System scalability, Performance optimization, Observability, Incident management, Mentorship, Product collaboration

Industry

Software Development

Description

About Auror At Auror, we’re empowering the retail industry to tackle theft and Organised Retail Crime, a $150 Billion problem globally. It’s high volume crime that’s increasingly organised in nature and is putting people, retailers, and communities at risk every day. Our current mission is to reduce violent retail crime by 50% in 5 years. Founded in New Zealand 11 years ago, we’re working with some of the best and largest retailers in the world across the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. Auror is connecting people and intelligence to reduce crime. We’re using technology for good. In partnership with our leading retail partners, we need people with the passion, determination, and innovation required to overcome one of the world's largest problems. If you’re looking to make a difference with and for the people dedicated to stopping crime, for good, then we want you on our team. We're also embracing the potential of AI to supercharge our impact—whether that's enhancing the way we detect trends, support our customers, or improve internal workflows. As a company, we're committed to responsibly incorporating AI into how we work and what we build, and we encourage all Aurors to be curious about how AI can elevate their work, regardless of role or function. About the role At Auror, strong collaboration and a growth mindset underpin how we build software. We believe meaningful impact comes from combining technical excellence with empowered, healthy teams. As Senior Engineering Lead within our Risk Detection domain, you will lead a team responsible for core detection capabilities including License Plate Recognition (LPR) and Automatic Subject Recognition (ASR). This team transforms high-volume, real-world signals, such as vehicle movements and subject identification, into accurate, actionable detections that help retailers and law enforcement prevent and respond to harm. These capabilities sit at the heart of Auror’s value proposition. They directly influence customer trust, operational decision-making, and real-world outcomes. Performance, correctness, and security are critical, as is the ability to operate reliably at scale in near real-time environments. You will build and lead a high-performing team, strengthen engineering practices, and work closely with product, design, data, and adjacent engineering streams. Your role is to create clarity and momentum, enabling teams to make strong decisions close to where context lives. Opportunities and challenges You will be joining a space built by experienced engineers with deep domain knowledge across detection systems and high-throughput event processing. As Auror grows, both LPR and ASR capabilities are expanding across regions, customers, and use cases, increasing the complexity and scale of the systems that support them. This creates a meaningful opportunity to evolve the Risk Detection platform to: Support significantly higher data volumes and event throughput Improve detection accuracy and confidence at scale Strengthen observability and operational reliability Enable faster iteration on detection models and pipelines Maintain strict standards around privacy, security, and data integrity This is a genuine leadership opportunity to shape how intelligent detection systems are built and operated at scale, while growing people, strengthening culture, and influencing mission-critical outcomes. What You’ll Do: Lead with clarity and collaboration: Partner closely with product and cross-stream stakeholders, working with other engineering leads and teams in the Risk Detection group to plan and deliver work collaboratively, while maintaining collective ownership of the product. Raise the bar on technical excellence: Set clear intent, articulate the “why,” and drive a culture of pragmatic engineering quality in systems where accuracy, latency, and reliability directly affect customer trust and real-world outcomes. Balance hands-on leadership with empowerment: Stay close enough to the work to unblock, review critical changes, and model strong technical judgement—while enabling engineers to own major technical decisions and delivery end-to-end. Mentor engineers through strong questions, coaching, and feedback, not just answers. Evolve our Risk Detection platform for scale: Guide architectural decisions that move us toward more scalable, resilient, service-oriented patterns—supporting increasing data volumes, new regions, and expanding use cases while keeping performance and operability front of mind. Build operational excellence: Strengthen observability, incident readiness, and on-call sustainability so the team can confidently run and improve mission-critical services. Use AI tooling to amplify delivery (without sacrificing quality): Help the team adopt tools like GitHub Copilot, Cursor, ChatGPT, and Claude in a way that accelerates development, improves learning, and maintains strong engineering standards. Champion scalable engineering practices: Establish fit-for-purpose testing strategies, efficient code review habits, and documentation that makes systems understandable, supportable, and safe to change as the stream grows. Partner tightly with product and cross-stream stakeholders: Collaborate with product leadership (and adjacent engineering streams) to ensure technical decisions translate into measurable customer impact in this highly sensitive and high-value area of the product. This role reports to Alicia Liebenberg, Director of Engineering I’ve spent two decades growing through the full arc of software engineering: from a software engineer, through release and platform roles, and eventually into leading multiple engineering teams across product, platform, and operational domains. My background sits firmly in the SaaS and enterprise software world, building systems that need to scale, stay resilient, and serve customers who depend on them every day. I lead with clarity, curiosity, and a people-first mindset. I believe great engineering happens when teams feel safe, supported, and challenged in all the right ways. I care deeply about craft, communication, and creating an environment where people do the best work of their careers. You’ll find me pushing for pragmatism, sharing context early and often, and looking for the story underneath the technical work so we stay connected to the impact we’re making. If you join the team, you can expect partnership, honest feedback, space to grow, and someone who genuinely wants you to succeed. Proven technical expertise: Strong proficiency in C#, .NET Core, React, TypeScript, and cloud-native architectures, coupled with the ability to understand technical decisions in the context of business value Leadership experience: Demonstrated experience leading engineering teams, managing performance, and cultivating a culture of accountability and excellence. Communication skills: The ability to distill complex technical concepts for a variety of audiences, including non technical stakeholders. Passion for integrating AI: Experience or interest in leveraging AI tools and LLMs as force multipliers for your team—not just following trends, but thoughtfully applying these technologies to enhance engineering practices, streamline workflows and accelerate delivery. Big picture thinking: A strategic mindset that considers the broader business impact of engineering decisions, including scalability, performance, maintainability, and user experience when guiding architectural discussions. Prioritisation and decision-making: Skill in helping teams navigate trade-offs between immediate value and long-term technical health, breaking complex initiatives into meaningful, shippable increments.. Passion for product quality: A strong understanding that technical excellence manifests as reliability, scalability, security, and data integrity, particularly crucial in our context of crime prevention and building safer communities. We are looking for people who demonstrate a strong alignment to our Guiding Principles (you can find these on our Careers page). Auror is committed to providing an inclusive and accessible application process to all candidates and we are actively working to improve diversity within the tech industry. We celebrate diversity and inclusiveness at Auror, regardless of (but not limited to) race, gender, sexual orientation, family status, religion, ethnicity, national origin, physical disability, veteran status, or age. If you need adjustments to any part of our recruitment process because of accessibility reasons, please do not hesitate to let us know during the application process. We will work with you to identify adjustments that will allow you to perform at your best. Competitive salary range: Depending on level of experience a starting salary of $142,500 - 182,500 (PL3) or $161,250 - $201,250 (PL4). Annual bonus: Eligibility for a bonus at the end of the financial year if we’ve hit our revenue goals together. Employee share scheme: You’ll own part of a company making a real difference! Flexibility: We are hard-working and outcome focused, but recognise there is more to life than work. We promote a healthy work/life blend. Shorter work weeks (at full pay): Everyone gets Friday afternoons off, so you can start your weekend early, and do more of whatever it is that makes you happy. Health Care Plan: In partnership with Nib, Auror covers 100% of the cost of your individual health insurance plan. Focus on mental and physical health: We understand how vital our health is and have policies to support your wellness, including: Wellness Days, and up to three expert sessions paid for every year. Family-friendly: We offer comprehensive parental leave and benefits for primary and non-primary caregivers, including a baby bonus and meals delivered to your door. Personal growth: We support our team to participate in courses, conferences, or events that will help them develop their skills. Team love: We have regular team lunches and social events where most (if not all) activities are during work hours. Next steps: If you’re excited about our mission and you have the experience and a passion for this role, please hit “Apply”. If you’re not sure that you tick all the boxes but feel you’re close to what we’re looking for, please apply anyway! We’re proud that Auror is a place where everyone can learn and grow so we’d love to hear from you. You'll be asked to submit a cover letter as part of your application. While this is optional we do encourage it, as we find cover letters can tell a story that resumes alone often cannot. Our hiring team love to understand what attracted you to this role and why you are excited about the opportunity to join Auror. Once you apply, you’ll hear from us to acknowledge your application. If you have questions about any of the above, or if you have any accessibility requirements, we’ll be able to help you from there.

Responsibilities

Lead a high-performing engineering team responsible for core detection capabilities like License Plate Recognition and Automatic Subject Recognition. Partner with product and cross-stream stakeholders to evolve the platform for scale, reliability, and operational excellence.