Software Engineering Manager - Optimisation Team

⚡About Amber

Amber is an entirely new way to buy and sell power, designed for a world powered by renewable energy. We give customers direct access to the real-time wholesale electricity price as it varies every 5 mins and the technology to shift more of their energy usage to the times when cheaper renewables are available in the grid. It’s a cheaper way to buy power, a smarter way to sell power, and the fastest way for Australia to reach 100% renewable energy.

We are a clear category leader in Australia for home battery automation and are growing rapidly (over 80k customers). We have also recently expanded into licensing our core technology to utilities overseas, including a partnership with E.ON Next in the UK.

Amber is backed by top Australian and international investors including Square Peg, Main Sequence, Breakthrough Victoria, Commonwealth Bank, NRMA, Gentrack, ETF Partners (UK/Europe based), and E.ON Next.

We are scaling rapidly and you’d be joining a team of over 200 committed to building a diverse, inclusive, and purpose-driven culture as we transform a major industry.

Our products are reshaping home energy: Amber for Batteries cuts bills by exporting stored energy at wholesale prices of up to $20/kWh, and Amber for EVs enables the cheapest, cleanest charging.

In 2026, we will push this even further with our new vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology.

💻 About the role

At Amber you’ll be able to apply your people and systems thinking skills to help enable the uptake of renewable energy. Our technology optimises thousands of batteries and other devices in customer households, enabling them to shift their electricity consumption to times of high renewable penetration (and cheap prices), and then export power back to the grid at critical times - letting people outbid coal and gas generators and earn potentially >$100 in an afternoon.

The Amber Electric product team develops and supports:

• Home automation integrations (batteries and EVs) that control electricity usage in response to pricing and renewable availability
• Mobile & Web apps for customers to monitor and manage their energy usage
• A pricing and billing engine for real time energy pricing
• The marketing site and associated tools to drive customer growth

We have a fantastic engineering team at Amber full of generous, kind, intelligent, and motivated people and your job will be to coach, grow, and support them.

You will be a frequent contributor / owner to:

• Product, design, and technical strategy across the team
• Shaping and delivering the team product roadmap in close partnership with leadership and product
• Ongoing optimisation of team-owned systems for internal stakeholders
• Hiring great people, getting them set up for success, and keeping them growing
• Performance conversations and reviews that are honest, useful, and ongoing
• Building a high-performing team that people actually want to be part of

We’re committed to maintaining and growing a diverse and inclusive workplace and expect any candidate to be aligned with that purpose and capable of supporting it.

👉🏽 Responsibilities

Build a balanced and high performing team, through recruiting from a wide range of backgrounds, experience levels, etc

Grow the individual capabilities of team members through continuous professional development, training, and performance reviews

Cultivate a highly collaborative environment and foster psychological safety

Contribute to technical and product strategy, especially where they touch on the capabilities (or gaps) of your team

Contribute to scalable and repeatable team processes and documentation (ie onboarding, performance review structures, etc.)

👉🏽 Requirements

At least two years of engineering management experience (or equivalent experience leading and growing a team)

A track record of leading Machine Learning engineers to be happy and successful, helping them do great work and grow their careers

Strong communication skills, written and verbal, grounded in genuine empathy for the people around you

A service-oriented mindset as this is an enablement team, so some of your success is measured by how well you help the overall product group succeed

A strong technical background enabling you to participate in problem solving and design discussion at all levels of the organisation

Ideally, you'll also have hands-on experience as a Machine Learning Engineer in one or more of:

Optimisation models or mathematical programming

Time series forecasting

Building automated, data-driven decision systems

Designing and executing end-to-end R&D pipelines

Scaling cloud-based systems

👉🏽 Nice to haves

Leadership experience in similar scale/trajectory businesses - Series B/C VC funded start-ups

Relevant domain experience from the energy or IoT sectors (or both)

Experience working close to the customer on product delivery teams

🎉 Benefits

We’re committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace and a great culture of people who love coming to work to build a better world.

You’d be a part of a rapidly growing team of over 200 with expertise across energy, technology, marketing, and operations.

Be part of a growing technology start-up that will shape the future of household and grid energy use.

Enjoy a lively, collaborative workspace at our buzzing Melbourne CBD headquarters in the heart of the city

Flexible working hours with provision for regular work from home arrangements.

Equitable gender-neutral parental leave policies.

An external Employee Assistance Plan (EAP) for mental health support.

Competitive salary and share options in Amber.

Annual Learning & Development budget to support your personal growth.

Additional PTO between Xmas & New Year