Lead Software Engineer

Who we are

Raion Systems is the software arm of the Raion Group and sister company to Raion Engineering — an established Australian engineering consultancy working in asset management, plant compliance and WHS across mines and heavy industrial sites. Raion Engineering is where the domain expertise comes from; Raion Systems is where it becomes software. Our platform is a suite of products built specifically to support maintenance and engineering teams maintain their equipment and compliance, based upon decades of firsthand experience.

Most software sold into this space is built by people who have never stood on a site. We know the domain better than our competitors do. Our first product goes live shortly, and we are looking for the engineer who will take technical leadership of the platform as we move from early product development into a secure, reliable, and scalable software business.

We are not looking for an established CTO. We are looking for an excellent Senior or Lead Engineer who is ready for broader technical ownership now, and who has the capability and ambition to grow into Head of Engineering and ultimately CTO as the company grows.

Until recently, we have had the benefit of a part-time CTO mentor who has built and sold software companies in this domain. They have been instrumental in getting us to launch, and we now need to set the company up for sustainable growth. The next step is to build permanent technical leadership inside the company.

Current Technology Environment

• The products currently use:

• PHP and Laravel

• React and TypeScript

• Node.js

• MySQL

• Python

• Linux-based VPS hosting

• Open-source frameworks and components

We are not looking for someone to replace technology simply because they prefer another stack.

You will be expected to understand what exists, identify its strengths and weaknesses, and make pragmatic decisions about what should be retained, strengthened, consolidated or replaced as the products mature.

Who you are

You are currently an Australian based Lead Engineer, or a Senior waiting for the right opportunity to make the step up. You are the one your team asks, the one who ends up owning the difficult piece.

You are ready for more ownership.

You still enjoy writing software. You want to influence not just how individual features are implemented, but how a software product is architected, tested, released, operated and scaled.

Initially this will be a hands-on role. We have a small development team, and you will contribute directly to the codebase while establishing the engineering practices required for a larger team.

As the business and engineering team grow, your role will progressively shift from primarily hands-on engineering towards technical leadership, team leadership and ultimately broader technology leadership.

What you will own

You will take the technical lead across the software business, including:

• Assessing existing products, architecture and technical risks, and defining the work to move them from beta into secure, reliable production use

• Setting the architecture and technical direction while balancing speed, quality, security, maintainability and cost

• Remaining hands-on in the codebase, particularly on difficult technical problems and foundational components

• Establishing engineering practices around testing, code review, documentation, deployment and release management

• Production hosting, monitoring, backups, recovery and incident management

• Defining an infrastructure strategy that can evolve as we move from a small number of customers to many

• Identifying and managing technical debt and areas of the platform that need strengthening before they constrain growth

• Working with our industry specialists to translate real customer problems before they constrain growth

• Leading and growing the development team, and the technical assessment of every hire

• Establishing a staged information security roadmap suitable for Australian enterprise customers

• Provide clear reporting to the Director on technology priorities, investment and risk.

What we are looking for

You do not need to have done every part of this job before.

We are particularly interested in engineers who have experience in several of the following:

• Commercialising software products beyond prototype or beta stage into production

• Leading software development teams

• Building and operating secure and reliable production SaaS platforms

• Designing and evolving web applications

• APIs, backend systems and relational databases

• PHP, Laravel, Node.js, MySQL or comparable technologies

• Linux, VPS, dedicated hosting, cloud or hybrid infrastructure

• Secure software development and vulnerability management

• Release management, CI/CD, automated testing and deployment

• Managing contractors, distributed teams and external suppliers

• Enterprise customer assurance and technical due diligence

• Communicating technology decisions, trade-offs and risks to non-technical stakeholders

Experience with any of the following would also be valuable:

• ISO 27001

• Australian Essential Eight

• Privacy and data protection requirements

• Enterprise identity management

• Multi-tenant B2B SaaS platforms

• Mining, resources, heavy industry

• Asset management or maintenance software

• Reliability engineering

• Compliance or supplier-management software

Domain expertise is advantageous, but not essential.

We would rather teach an excellent technical leader our industry than try to teach an industry specialist how to lead software engineering.

What success looks like during your first 6-12 months, we would expect you to have:

• Developed a strong understanding of the existing products and architecture

• Identified the most important technical, security and operational risks

• Established a pragmatic engineering and release process

• Improved the reliability and visibility of our production environments

• Defined the technical priorities required to support commercial growth

• Established clear development standards for the growing engineering team

• Helped recruit and onboard additional engineers

• Become the person the business trusts to provide clear technical judgement

We do not expect everything to be perfect. We expect you to know what matters now, what can wait, and why.

Where this can lead

This role is deliberately design to grow.

Initially, you will be our senior hands-on technical leader.

As the development team and custom base expand, we expect the role to develop into Head of Engineering, with greater responsibility for people, delivery and engineering operations.

Beyond that, there is a genuine opportunity to grow into the CTO role, taking broader responsibility for technology strategy, security, architecture, capability, investment and the technical direction of the business.

Those positions do not currently exist. They will be created as the company reaches the point where it needs them.

What we offer

• The Raion Group is Primarily based in Townsville, Nth QLD, but we support fully remote within Australia

• Significant influence over the architecture and engineering practices of an emerging software business

• A hands-on technical role rather than a management-only position

• A genuine pathway to Head of Engineering and CTO

• The opportunity to build and shape the engineering team around you

• The opportunity to help commercialise products solving real problems in mining and heavy industry

• No on-call and no weekend rotation. Support runs business hours, and you design how it works rather than staffing it

• Direct access to the engineering and compliance expertise the product is built on

Apply with a CV and a few paragraphs about something you helped take to production, what went wrong, and what you learned from it.

We are less interested in a perfect project than in how you think when real software meets real users.