Technical Lead

About the Role?

We are seeking a passionate and experienced Technical Lead to join our technology team at Zai. This role is all about leading with purpose, steering technical strategy, architecting scalable solutions, and mentoring a team of brilliant engineers.

Reporting directly to the Head of Technology, you will work closely with engineering leads, product managers, and business stakeholders to deliver high-quality, Scalable software that powers the Zai payments platform. From shaping architecture to tackling legacy systems and guiding technical delivery, you will be at the heart of everything we build. This is a hybrid role based in Melbourne HQ.

Why Zai?

Zai is a leading payments platform provider, backed by a global banking powerhouse, Standard Chartered. Zai is a pioneer in real-time payments. We were the first non-bank to connect merchants to the NPP and have been powering large scale payment solutions for over a decade.

Processing billions of dollars in monthly payment volume, we're scaling fast and we’re just getting started. Learn more about our journey at hellozai.com 🚀 

What you will be doing?

Lead the Tech

• Lead the technical design, architecture and delivery of software solutions in collaboration with other engineering leaders and senior engineers. 

• Maintain and extend existing APIs, services and customer facing applications, ensuring that technical debt is managed effectively while still delivering timely business value. 

• Ensure software is built to meet performance, scalability, reliability, and security standards. 

• Enforce coding best practices, guidelines and quality standards to ensure new and existing code is maintainable and well documented. 

• Evaluate new technologies and frameworks to modernize and enhance our product and processes.

• Provide thought leadership on how to handle legacy systems, ensuring they can evolve to meet new business needs while minimizing long-term risk.

Empower and Mentor the Team

• Mentor and lead engineers within your team to continually improve engineering capability, manage individual performance, and foster wellbeing.

• Foster a collaborative and innovated team culture, ensuring effective communication and knowledge sharing.

• Assist in troubleshooting and resolving complex technical issues in a timely manner.

• Conduct code reviews and ensure high-quality code is being delivered by the team.

• Empower team members to take ownership of projects and grow their technical expertise.

Project Management

• Work closely with product managers to support the development and prioritization of initiatives, by providing reliable technical assessments, advice, and estimates. 

• Break down large projects into manageable tasks and deliverables.

Improve how we work

• Contribute to the evolution of the technology team’s development processes, tools, workflows and ways of working with other teams.  

• Identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies in development processes and foster a culture of continuous improvement  

• Advocate for Agile methodologies.

Competencies?

• Technical Expertise: Strong foundation in software development principles, design patterns and architecture. Demonstrates proficiency in core programming languages, tools, and frameworks, with the ability to quickly learn and adapt to new technologies.

• Leadership & Mentorship: Proven ability to lead and mentor teams, fostering a collaborative environment where team members feel supported, valued and motivated to achieve their goals. Capable of leading teams with a mix of local and offshore personnel. 

• Problem Solving: Ability to identify complex technical problems, analyse them systematically, and come up with practical, effective solutions. 

• Decision Making: Capable of taking a pragmatic approach to balancing competing priorities, such as addressing technical debt vs delivering business value. Takes a consultative, data-driven approach, ensuring relevant stakeholders are engaged in the decision-making process. 

• Communication: Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to clearly articulate and document technical concepts.

• Business Acumen: Understanding of business priorities and how technical decisions align with company goals. Ability to propose solutions that drive business outcomes while maintaining technical integrity. 

• Collaboration & Cross-functional Work: Comfortable working closely with product managers, QA, and other teams to ensure successful project delivery. 

• Adaptability: Able to pivot and adapt to change, shifting priorities, or unexpected challenges while maintaining focus.

• Quality Focus: Commitment to delivering high-quality, reliable software. Demonstrates a strong focus on testing, code reviews, and continuous improvement.

• Customer Focus: Strives to understand the needs and goals of customers and ensures that technical solutions are aligned with delivering value to them.

Skills?

• Strong proficiency in Ruby on Rails and Java. Go desirable.

• Experience in development of API-based / primarily backend systems.

• Experience in relational database design. 

• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS) and DevOps tools

• Solid understanding of Agile software development methodologies.

• Familiar with micro-services and event-driven architectures. 

• Experience in software testing frameworks & CI/CD pipelines.

What are we looking for?

• 5+ years of experience in software development, with at least 2 years in a lead or senior role. 

• Proven experience designing, building and scaling production-grade systems.

• Experience in leading technical teams and mentoring engineers.

• Strong background in designing system architecture and making technical decisions.

• Experience in FinTech and payments services is a plus

• Skilled at motivating teams and fostering a positive, high-performance culture.

• Excellent problem solving and critical thinking skills

• Comfortable managing multiple priorities in a dynamic environment.

Perks?

• 💰 Competitive salary package and benefits

• 🏝️ 5 weeks of annual leave as standard

• 👶🏼 12 weeks paid parental leave

• 🏠 One-off working from home allowance

• 💰 Salary sacrificing options 

• 🌱 Work remotely from anywhere in the world for 4 weeks every year

• 🧠 An innovative, inclusive, and collaborative team culture

• 💼 A beautiful CBD office (opposite Southern Cross Station)

• 🤸‍♂️ A flexible, fun work environment where you’ll learn every day