Technical Lead - Data Platform & Engineering

Company Description

Are you ready to be a big part of something big? 

At carsales, we’re all about making buying and selling a great experience. Since 1997, we’ve been evolving with the new economy to help people choose how they move - today and tomorrow.

When it comes to your career, we want to offer meaningful opportunities that empower you to make a lasting impact. But for that to happen, we strive to feel small - small enough to stay agile, learn across teams, and connect authentically with each other.

With a vision to be the global leader in online vehicle marketplaces, we’re transforming how people buy and sell across the world. We discover new ideas and bring them to life. We continue to grow, and we continue to evolve - and we’re not afraid to take bold steps to get there.

Our Data Team has embarked on an exciting phase of transformation anchored to our vision of turning carsales’ data into compounding advantage - for every buyer, seller, dealer and team and in this unique role you will collaborate closely with our Product & Technology Teams in delivery of our collaboratively built strategy and roadmaps, to help understand customer lifecycle, drive engagement and execute on new products with customer experience always top of mind. 

A career in Data at carsales means being at the heart of decision-making, powering the insights behind every product, feature, and experience we deliver to millions of users. The team builds scalable data platforms, maintains trusted and high-quality data pipelines, and enables advanced analytics – empowering teams across the business to make smarter, faster, and more customer-centric decisions. The data team is the engine behind carsales' shift from running the marketplace to being the intelligence behind it. 

We embrace hybrid working - combining the flexibility of remote work with the energy and connection of in-person collaboration. We champion flexibility and offer a range of policies and leave options to support your wellbeing.

What’s on offer

• Recognition as one of Australia’s Best Workplaces™ by Great Place to Work®, a Family Friendly Workplace, a WORK180 endorsed employer.
• A highly engaged, collaborative team where you’ll learn from exceptional talent.
• 24 weeks paid parental leave for primary caregivers, four weeks for secondary caregivers, and six weeks paid gender-affirming care leave.
• Regular hackathons, continuous learning opportunities, and wellbeing initiatives that support your mental, emotional, and physical health.

Job Description

What you’ll be doing

As Technical Lead for Data Platform Engineering, you'll operate beyond individual domain ownership -  providing cross-team architectural direction, running technical discovery, and acting as a technical partner to product and engineering leadership. This is an individual contributor role with informal mentoring responsibility, not a people-management position.

• Provide architectural direction across DPE's platform ensuring consistency and technical coherence across domains owned by different Senior Data Engineers.
• Act as a technical partner to product and engineering leadership, shaping technical strategy rather than only executing against a backlog.
• Set and evolve engineering standards across the team - code quality, testing, CI/CD, security, and data governance - ensuring they scale across multiple domains and squads.
• Provide technical oversight on major initiatives such as data democratisation and platform modernisation.
• Mentor Senior and Mid-level engineers, particularly on complex, cross-domain problems and architectural judgement.
• Represent DPE in cross-functional architecture and technical forums, building trust and alignment with adjacent teams (analytics, product, and other engineering groups).
• Identify emerging technology and tooling opportunities (including AI-augmented engineering) and bring evaluated, adoptable recommendations to the team.
• Help resolve the most ambiguous or highest-impact technical problems, stepping in where scope crosses multiple domains or ownership boundaries.

Qualifications

What we’re looking for

• Proven experience at Senior Data Engineer level or above, with demonstrated success owning significant platform domains end-to-end.
• Deep, cross-cutting expertise across the data platform stack: Snowflake, dbt Cloud, Python, RabbitMQ, Postgres, and AWS.
• A track record of driving architectural decisions that were adopted beyond your own immediate team or domain.
• Experience running structured technical discovery and communicating outcomes clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Strong stakeholder management skills - comfortable operating as a technical partner to product and engineering leadership with limited oversight.
• A demonstrated ability to mentor and uplift other engineers - influence through trust and technical credibility.
• Genuine curiosity about emerging tools and approaches (including AI-augmented engineering), balanced with rigour in evaluating them before recommending adoption.
• Strong collaboration and communication skills, aligned with our values: (customer-obsessed, curious, connected).

We know not everyone will meet every requirement, and that’s okay. If you’re excited about the role and believe you can make a difference, we’d love to hear from you.

Additional Information

A few other things we want you to know...

• As an equal opportunity employer, carsales welcomes applications from individuals of all backgrounds, identities, abilities, and life experiences. We are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone feels valued and supported.
• If you have a disability or require adjustments to participate fully in the recruitment process, please let us know - we’re here to support you.
• We understand the importance of work-life balance and offer flexible working arrangements, including part-time options. If you’d like to explore this, just ask during the process.
• We’re also a proud Circle Back Initiative employer, which means we commit to responding to every applicant.
• Successful candidates joining the carsales team will need to complete a National Police Record check and must have full-time Australian working rights.

So come and join our team - because every role is a big role in our plans to go big.