Engineering Team Lead - Risk & Value Optimisation (RVO)

About Neara and RVO

At Neara, we develop state-of-the-art machine learning-driven, physics-based digital twin models of electricity grids spanning four continents. Our technology enables asset owners to forecast extreme weather impacts on power networks before they occur, helping them identify risks and optimize investments for a resilient energy future.

The Risk & Value Optimisation (RVO) product is Neara's flagship analytics platform that assigns a true cost to utility assets and guides decision-making. It helps customers assess their current risk exposures, simulate changes in investment, policy, and environment, and optimize budgets balancing risk and expenses. This supports utilities in managing aging infrastructure, responding to evolving challenges, and crafting defensible investment plans under regulatory scrutiny.

Role Overview

We seek an Engineering Team Lead to guide the team developing RVO. This role balances people leadership and deep technical contribution—approximately 60% managing and mentoring engineers and 40% engaging hands-on with coding and system design. As RVO is a greenfield project, the leader will have significant influence over its architectural direction, prioritizing meaningful customer outcomes over theoretical code development.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage delivery end-to-end by planning quarterly work, setting clear goals, and ensuring reliable, sustainable releases.
• Lead, support, and mentor around three engineers within a five-member cross-functional team, fostering career growth, high-quality execution, and strong engineering culture including beyond your immediate team.
• Stay technically engaged by contributing to architectural decisions and writing and reviewing production-level code, especially in performance-critical, data-intensive areas.
• Balance core engineering platform and application layer development to maintain performance, flexibility, and maintainability as the solution scales.
• Handle complex, large-scale data ingestion and structuring from diverse sources (GIS, LiDAR, asset condition, failure histories) integrated with geospatial libraries covering extensive networks.
• Collaborate closely with Product, Deployment, Customer Success, and Sales teams; engage customers to understand their challenges, anticipate dependencies on other platform components, and align resources proactively.
• Elevate engineering practices through influencing tooling, long-term platform strategies, and fostering growth of Neara's engineering culture.

Candidate Profile

• Minimum four years experience leading software teams with direct people management and end-to-end delivery ownership across engineering and product domains.
• Demonstrated ability to quickly assimilate new technical fields, identify core problems autonomously, and deliver effective solutions.
• Strong product focus and partnership skills to center the team on real customer issues facing utilities rather than abstract problems.
• Experience managing complex projects incrementally with adaptability based on ongoing evidence rather than rigidly following initial plans.
• Deep technical expertise designing and deploying complex, production-grade systems with sound architectural judgement.
• Formal background such as a Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience in Computer Science, Mathematics, or related disciplines.
• A no-ego attitude with dedication to polished, precise outcomes, especially as work impacts major investment decisions, and a collaborative mindset supporting teammates.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading software teams working on financial, regulatory, investment, or analysis-intensive products.
• Familiarity with geospatial systems, energy utilities, simulation platforms, physics-based modeling, or related engineering fields (mechanical, civil, electrical) and strong quantitative skills.

Why Join Neara?

• Competitive salary and employee stock options.
• Substantial opportunities for personal development and career progression.
• Fully flexible working arrangements with a fully equipped office in Redfern, Sydney.
• Annual company-wide retreats and a merit-based, low bureaucracy culture devoid of egos.
• The chance to work on challenging, impactful products addressing real-world energy infrastructure issues.
• Play a key role shaping the trajectory of a rapidly growing technology company.
• A welcoming workplace committed to diversity, inclusion, equal opportunity, and encouraging applications from all backgrounds.