Engineering Manager

Job Description Build the AI-Powered Backbone of Global Customer Experience At Zendesk, we aren't just reacting to the AI revolution; we are building the infrastructure that defines it. Our Core Services team in Melbourne is responsible for the high-scale distributed systems that power millions of human connections every day. Why join this team? Scale that Matters: You will own the engine room of Zendesk, managing services like data delivery and authentication that support massive enterprise global traffic. The AI Frontier: This isn’t a maintenance role. You will be at the forefront of AIOps , embedding machine learning into our DNA to automate incident triage and revolutionise developer productivity. Modernisation Mandate: You’ll have the autonomy to drive a multi-year roadmap, moving us toward a more cost-aware, resilient, and AI-driven architecture. What You’ll Be Doing Lead & Empower: Mentor a cross-functional team of engineers, fostering a culture of high ownership and psychological safety. Architect the Future: Define the technical roadmap for platform modernisation (Orchestration, Data Delivery, Auth) while balancing keeping the lights on with aggressive innovation. Pioneer MLOps: Establish deployment patterns for platform-facing models, focusing on embeddings, ranking, and observability to reduce manual toil. Drive Execution: Partner with PMs to ship predictably, using DORA metrics and error budgets to maintain a world-class delivery cadence. Operational Excellence: Champion modern CI/CD, canary deployments, and robust observability to ensure our systems are as resilient as they are scalable. What You Bring The ideal candidate is a seasoned engineer who transitioned into leadership because they love scaling people as much as they love scaling systems. Leadership: 2 years of direct experience managing software teams in a production environment. Technical Depth: 5 years of hands-on experience with complex, high-throughput distributed systems (ideally Ruby, Java, or Scala). Cloud Native: Deep familiarity with AWS, Kubernetes, and modern CI/CD (GitHub Actions). The AI Curious Mindset: A strong interest or experience in AIOps or MLOps, you see the potential for AI to solve infrastructure problems. Communication: The ability to translate complex technical strategy into a compelling narrative for stakeholders and your team alike. Bonus Points For... 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. Why Zendesk? We offer a hybrid work model that balances the energy of our Melbourne hub with the flexibility you need. Beyond competitive pay and and other benefits, you’ll gain the opportunity to leave a legacy on a platform used by the world's most iconic brands. Hybrid: In this role, our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection, collaboration, learning, and celebration - while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. This role must attend our local office for part of the week. The specific in-office schedule is to be determined by the hiring manager. The intelligent heart of customer experience Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love. Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. Our hybrid way of working, enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week. As part of our commitment to fairness and transparency, we inform all applicants that artificial intelligence (AI) or automated decision sy ... (truncated, view full listing at source)