Head of Engineering

Are you ready to shape the future of Digital Advertising?

Publift is a dynamic Adtech company dedicated to empowering online publishers and websites to maximize their revenue from display ads. We are passionate about driving publisher growth and have an amazing team committed to this mission. We empower publishers to feel safe and thrive for a long time.

Fueled by recent enhancements in our sales capacity and product development efforts, Publift has experienced exciting growth since our inception. We will continue to grow, and we continue to evolve—and we’re committed to taking innovative steps to get there.

Founded in 2015, we have a diverse team of Pub-lifters, growing to over 70 people across three countries!

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.

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.
• Continuous learning opportunities, and wellbeing initiatives that support your mental, emotional, and physical health.

What you'll do

This role reports directly to the Managing Director and leads a team of circa 20, spanning engineering and data science. You’ll take ownership of scaling a modern, high-performing engineering function, driving both technical excellence and meaningful commercial impact across the business. This is not a typical engineering role the problem space is complex, commercially critical and genuinely interesting. You won’t just be “building CRUD faster” you’ll be solving revenue optimisation challenges that sit at the intersection of theory, experimentation and engineering.

With strong investment and momentum around AI, you’ll play a central role in shaping how it is embedded across the organisation building the platforms, capabilities and culture required to unlock its full potential.

You'll

• Recruiting, mentoring and developing a high-performing engineering and data science team
• Defining and executing an engineering strategy aligned to broader business and technology objectives
• Uplifting existing engineering practices, including CI/CD, cloud architecture and delivery standards, to support an AI-first future
• Owning and evolving the current tech stack (Typescript, Node, Python, React, Google Cloud) to ensure scalability and performance
• Building platform capabilities that enable and accelerate AI adoption across the organisation

What we are looking for:

• Proven experience in a senior engineering leadership role (e.g. Head of Engineering, Director, or Senior Engineering Manager)
• Strong product and customer orientation, with the ability to quickly build domain expertise, particularly in complex environments such as ad-tech
• A hands-on technical leader who is comfortable contributing to the codebase where needed to set standards, guide architecture, or prototype solutions
• Deep understanding of data-driven decision making, ideally with exposure to MLOps and experience productionising data science models

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.

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

• As an equal opportunity employer, Publift 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 team will need to complete a National Police Record check and must have full-time Australian working rights.

So come and join us because every role contributes something meaningful as we embark on this exciting journey of growth and innovation.