Director of Engineering

About StarRez

StarRez is the global leader in student housing software, providing innovative solutions for on and off-campus housing management, resident wellness and experience, and revenue generation. Trusted by 1,400+ clients across 25+ countries, StarRez supports more than 4 million beds annually with its user-friendly, all-in-one platform, delivering seamless experiences for students and administrators. With offices in the United States, Australia, the UK, and India, StarRez blends the robust capabilities of a global organization with the personalized care and service of a trusted partner.

The Role

The Director of Engineering is a proactive, self-starting leader of leaders who will play a pivotal role across our global engineering teams. This role combines deep technical expertise with the ability to influence, coach, and drive adoption of new practices across the organization.

As part of our Engineering Leadership team, you will guide multiple teams—including AI Enablement—to uplift product practices, drive technical excellence, and help StarRez accelerate into its next stage of growth. You will ensure that we build the right things, in the right way, while embedding modern engineering practices and unlocking the potential of AI across our platform.

You will be a visible and trusted voice of technical direction at StarRez, partnering closely with principal engineers, product leaders, and cross-functional stakeholders.

What You Will Own

• AI Enablement & Adoption: Lead our AI enablement efforts and champion the effective use of AI in day-to-day engineering. This includes building out capabilities for other engineering teams to utilise in creating new functionalities within their product areas, driving adoption of AI best practices, and developing enabling tools.
• Technical Strategy & Excellence: Shape and communicate technical direction, ensuring engineering excellence is at the core of how we build. Partner with principal engineers to uplift architecture, practices, and delivery.
• Team Leadership & Growth: Manage and grow multiple high-performing teams and foster a culture of learning, accountability, and innovation.
• Delivery & Roadmap Management: Oversee the technical roadmap and delivery practices. Balance innovation with execution by making pragmatic decisions that optimize quality, scalability, and customer value.
• Stakeholder Management: Ensure alignment with key stakeholders by continuously communicating plans and status effectively across the company. Manage relationships with cross-functional and business stakeholders, as well as external vendors.
• Metrics and KPIs: Be data driven in your approach to understand and improve both Engineering process and product performance. Driven to deliver high quality value for customers, you will be optimising the end to end software delivery process.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with leaders in Product, Engineering, and other business units to ensure alignment and consistent delivery of customer value.
• Coaching & Uplift: Act as a mentor and coach to engineering leaders and teams, improving product and engineering practices through active guidance and training.
• Voice of Engineering: Be a strong advocate for engineering within the company, representing technical direction and fostering confidence in our ability to deliver at scale.

Required Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience building and leading software engineering teams in a B2B SaaS environment.
• 2+ years of experience leading multiple mid-sized teams (20+ engineers).
• Proven ability to drive technical excellence and adoption of new technologies (preferably AI/ML enablement) across an organization.
• Strong technical background, with the ability to confidently engage with engineers on architecture, tooling, and design decisions.
• Experience successfully leading teams through multiple production launches.
• Deep knowledge of agile software development methodologies and best practices.
• Strong leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working in growth-stage SaaS companies.
• Background in property management technology or higher education housing tech.
• Demonstrated experience introducing AI tooling, frameworks, or practices into engineering teams.
• Engineering and/or Business degree qualifications.

Reasons to join our Team:

• You will be part of a vibrant and supportive culture, with weekly team lunches.    
• We are a flexible and hybrid workplace.   
• You will have access to professional development opportunities.     
• Be part of a global team, participate in monthly global meetings and partner with team members in different countries.     
• Z-Factor: Our most celebrated value, you will work with a team of caring, energetic, high-performing, and passionate people who have fun supporting our vision, innovation & continuous improvement.  

We are proud of our diverse workforce and are dedicated to creating a safe and welcoming environment for all employees. People from various ethnicities, ages, genders, and abilities are encouraged to apply.

Please note, StarRez requires all candidates to have full work rights in Australia

Notice to external Recruiters and Recruitment Agencies:

StarRez will not accept unsolicited resumes from recruitment agencies, headhunters, or any other third parties for this role through this website or directly to any employee. StarRez and any of our subsidiaries will not pay fees to any third-party agency or company. In addition, we ask that you do not reach out to any employee with regards to this position, or any other positions, now, or in the future.