Engineering Manager - Machine Learning

Melbourne or Sydney preferred, but remote friendly

Full-Time | Permanent

Exclusive Partnership for Interface Agency with me&u

A LITTLE ABOUT ME&U

When it comes to food experiences, me&u helps guests feel like locals wherever they are. The company’s vision is to bring that feeling to everyone, anywhere, so no matter what neighbourhood someone lives in or visits, they will know the right place to go and exactly what to order.

me&u is used by 6000+ bars, pubs, and restaurants to create memorable guest experiences and grow their brands. With 200 staff across five countries, and headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, me&u is the consolidation of two leading hospitality technology companies: Mr Yum and me&u, who merged in November 2023.

ABOUT THE ROLE

• Engineering Managers at me&u serve a dual role as people and technology leaders. They drive solution design, technical direction, and delivery for their team, while aligning to me&u’s engineering principles and technical vision.
• As part of me&u’s vision to become the world’s leading personalised guest experience platform for hospitality, the Engineering Manager leads a group of engineers in a cross-functional team. Together, the team works end to end on building the Guest Intelligence Engine, leveraging ML/AI and me&u’s deep dataset to personalise every step of the guest experience in ways that feel delightful and helpful, but never intrusive. This includes great recommendations, smarter social menus, faster ordering, seamless payments, and memorable service.
• The role reports to the CTO and works closely with the Product Manager and Product Designer for the stream, balancing desirability, viability, and feasibility across the product being co‑created, and ensuring an experience worthy of the me&u brand.
• Engineering Managers at me&u are technical and are expected to be hands‑on, delivering production code. The primary responsibility, however, is to act as multipliers by enabling the team to do their best work.
• me&u is open to very strong individual contributors who have technical leadership experience delivering commercial projects, have informal people leadership experience (such as mentoring), and are ready to step into a people management role while remaining hands‑on.

WHAT THE ROLE WILL DO

• Lead and nurture a team of engineers through influence rather than authority, while being recognised for technical leadership and staying flexible enough to champion the solutions of others
• Collaborate closely with the ML/AI Practice Lead (who is also an IC on the stream)
• Provide people management to the group of Engineers, including career development, 1:1s, and responsibility for team performance and culture
• Proactively monitor and communicate team health and performance to Product and Engineering Leadership
• Drive and own solution design and architecture for a new product from conception to production, including managing on-call for the systems that form it
• Build anti-fragile systems with well tested, maintainable code, and champion engineering and quality practices within the team and beyond
• Own and be accountable for delivery by planning and executing cross‑functional technical projects, providing leadership in a collaborative and user‑focused environment
• Ensure software is delivered to engineering quality standards, optimised to solve the customer problem while also addressing non‑functional requirements such as security, testing, and monitoring
• Contribute as part of the technology leadership group (technology vision guild), continuously reviewing and improving technical solutions and engineering practices
• Balance rapid iteration with stability, security, and maintainability across the system
• In collaboration with the Talent team, attract and recruit engineers to grow a diverse, technically excellent team operating across seniority levels
• Partner closely with cross‑functional team members across product, design, and other business units such as marketing and partnership to achieve the stream’s outcomes
• Led the release of the first iteration of the Personalised Recommendations product to thousands of venues and millions of guests (73% of Australians have used the product in the past year)
• Collaborated on setting the architecture of the Personalisation Domain, including an events pipeline to drive personalisation signals and quantify the value of personalisation to customers
• Negotiated with company leadership on setting stream direction for 2026
• Crafted front‑end code to improve the guest experience
• Written back‑end code to surface personalised recommendations through an API
• Implemented changes to data pipelines to scale ML processing
• Supported others’ growth by providing regular feedback to peers and explaining technical decisions and ideas to more junior engineers

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

• Commercial experience in DataOps and/or MLOps (must have)
• Experience leading technical delivery with engineers in a collaborative, cross‑functional product team, working closely with Product Management, Product Design, and external peers (Tech Leadership)
• Strong coaching skills, with the ability to guide engineers at all levels in delivery, solution design, and engineering practices
• Ability to champion flexibility and agility in delivery, including making decisions on the right level of polish vs MVP and negotiating trade‑offs effectively
• Experience continuously improving software engineering and agile best practices
• Excellent communication skills, including the ability to work with cross‑functional and non‑technical stakeholders across the business and timezones
• Experience working with scalable architecture using modularised, distributed applications
• Event Driven Architecture, Domain Driven Design, and distributed systems experience (must)
• Preference for accepted industry patterns over reinventing the wheel, with a “tools first” mindset and a drive to improve existing tools, libraries, or patterns where relevant

NICE TO HAVE

• Direct line‑management and people leadership experience
• Experience in consumer‑facing personalisation
• Understanding of the hospitality industry and what makes a guest experience unique and personalised
• Strengths in one or more of the following: modern front‑end architecture, consumer‑facing hybrid app development

WHY ME&U

Work with impact and purpose. We’re helping the hospitality and entertainment industries to thrive and me&u is at the forefront of this. Expect collaboration and interesting problems to solve.

Work with great people. Work alongside a supportive, diverse and inclusive team. You’ll have the trust, freedom and support to experiment and not be afraid of failure but to learn from it—and have fun together along the way.

Work that challenges you. We’re growing quickly, and you will too. You’ll have numerous opportunities to embrace discomfort, grow and learn as me&u expands and scales globally.

Work that works for you. We’re a flexible, remote‑friendly place with inclusive leave options and day‑to‑day work times to suit your routine. We prioritise our team’s mental health & overall wellbeing, with access to mental health days and support programs.

Diversity and Inclusion Commitment

We’re committed to growing and empowering an inclusive me&u community. That’s why we actively encourage applications from candidates from all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. If you require accessibility assistance at any stage of the process, please let us know.

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