At ASC we know that the mixture of experience, skills, and attitude are key ingredients in making a team succeed so we need the right people on board.

We value diversity in all its forms, including diversity of experience. It's been shown that people in underrepresented groups may only apply for a role when they meet all the role criteria, but if you think you have what it takes then apply anyway and let's see where it goes!

Who are we and what's our purpose?

Author-it Software Co. (ASC) is a world leading provider of on-premise and cloud-based products for authoring technical publications, e-learning and pharmaceutical information.

What does that mean for our customers? Our tools are used by some of the world’s largest organisations to enable reuse, reassembly and multiformat consumption of mission critical content. Our two software platforms, Docuvera and Author-it, enable the transformation of how our customers create and manage their content, leveraging a component first approach where content is broken down, easily assembled into documents, and reused across their organisation.

Our two products serve different industries; Docuvera’s focus is solving the problem of inefficiency in creating and updating documentation through the drug development lifecycle for biopharma for large global Life Science customers, while Author-it provides technical documentation, learning & development, and compliance solutions for hightech, manufacturing, energy and more, at enterprise scale across the globe.

Established in 2000, we are currently headquartered in Wellington, New Zealand. We have a team of over 100 people based mainly in New Zealand, Europe, and the United States, working across Technology, Product, Quality, Customer Success, Marketing, Sales, Finance and People Experience teams.

The part you’ll play​

As a Technical Lead for ASC, you will be an important player in the successful delivery of our Docuvera SaaS product. This means helping share expertise, providing technical guidance and mentoring our engineering squads, as well as collaborating with and supporting other teams every day.

You will be working closely with our Senior Technical Lead and other Technical Leads around the business, helping to continuously evolve the Docuvera engineering strategy to steer us towards a common technical vision as we expand into new use cases and markets.

In your squad, you will be working alongside the product team, architects, DevOps, Engineers and testers to deliver value to customers by driving better outcomes across the product delivery lifecycle underpinning our releases. You will still be involved with some coding and code reviews to stay in touch with the codebase.

Part of your role will be communicating a shared technical and architectural vision for the initiative project/feature/epic to help ensure the system or solution under development is fit for its intended purpose.

You will also lead the development of the engineers in your team, helping them feel empowered in their role and supported in their growth and learning.

ASC is looking for a highly motivated and empathic individual who can blend great mentoring and coaching skills with day-to-day leadership and development skills.

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What you’ll focus on​

You’ve already made great use of your natural analytical and problem-solving skills, and as a result you’ve got significant experience in building scalable, production-quality software that achieves that mightiest goal – for the end user, it ‘just works’. You will focus on:

• Encouraging and supporting the professional development of the engineers in your squad.
• Leading the value-creation initiatives for your squad.
• Leading continuous improvement via an inspect and adapt approach.
• Being responsible for the updating and maintenance of the Architecture Design Responsibility Document Design Documentation as per the PDLC (Product Development Lifecycle)
• Capturing the Design Decision Log
• Defining subsystems and their interfaces, allocate responsibilities to subsystems, understand solution deployment, and communicate requirements for interactions with solution context. (C4)
• Establishing critical NFRs (Non-Functional Requirements) at the solution level, participate in the definition of others.
• Defining, exploring, and supporting the implementation project/feature/epic enablers to evolve solution intent, working directly with squad teams to implement them.
• Planning and developing the Architectural Runway in support of new business features and capabilities.
• Collaborating on assessing and selecting technologies that enable Docuvera to achieve the best imaginable solutions.
• Using data to inform and validate decisions that balance the needs of customers with commercial outcomes.
• Engaging with the engineers and the processes in the squads to build close relationships and ways of working together.
• Supporting the Senior Technical Lead in executing and improving cross-cutting talent management initiatives and processes such as recruitment, growth and performance management.
• Assisting with the development of a world-class engineering culture where engineers have the skills and autonomy needed to build high-quality product.
• Ensuring that work is being delivered at a high quality and testing & documentation standards are maintained.
• Working closely with the Release Lead to help releases go smoothly.
• Participating in planning, definition, and high-level detail design of the solution and exploring solution alternatives.
• Working with the Enterprise and Solution architect roles as required to incorporate the required architecture/design patterns.
• Actively envisioning a technological approach that enables quick implementation, delivery and support of ongoing operations.
• Supporting the squad in implementing solutions incrementally and iteratively.
• Driving and enabling the design process that will support and enable the delivery pipeline with:
  • Releasability - design to enable various incremental release strategies and align them with business demand.
  • Testability - design and architect in a modular way to enable continuous testing.
  • Separation of deploy and release - enable to continuously deploy with architectural enablers.
• Architecting for operations - Build telemetry and logging capabilities into every application and into the solution as a whole.
• Threat modelling - Information security consideration by identifying threats to proposed architecture, infrastructure, and applications.
• Providing oversight and fostering built-In quality within the squad.
• Working with Product Management, implementation stakeholders, and suppliers to establish high-level Solution Intent, and the solution intent information models and documentation requirements.
• Working with portfolio stakeholders, notably the Enterprise and Solution Architect, to develop, analyse, split, and realize the implementation of enabler epics.
• Working with the Product and Solution Management stakeholders to determine the capacity allocation for enablement work
• Participating in Release Planning and Pre- and Post- Release Planning, System and Solution Demos, and Inspect and Retrospectives events

What you’ll bring to the role​

At ASC we know that the mixture of experience, skills and attitude are key ingredients in making a team succeed so we need the right people on board. ​

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You'll have some or all of these technical skills, experience and knowledge ​

• 5+ years’ experience in software development.
• 3+ years’ experience leading a team or mentoring reports.
• The desire to build and ship amazing product.
• Excellent grasp of modern software development practices, lifecycle and product delivery practices.
• Experience in tech stacks that include TypeScript (or JavaScript), Node.js, Angular, Rest and GraphQL APIs, Postgres, DynamoDB, AWS would be ideal.
• Experience in managing and working with DevOps.
• Excellent people leadership and management experience.
• Familiarity with Agile/Scrum/Kanban development methodology.
• Have a demonstrated ability to meet tight deadlines in an agile/iterative software development process without losing sight of longer-term goals or the big picture.
  

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We're looking for these core soft skills​

• You have a strong instinct for how the software is supposed to work and where to track down defects, and you’re proactive about jumping on them at every opportunity. You’re also a meticulous planner, always looking ahead, skillfully organising what’s next, and influencing your team members to drive great work that helps get us there. ​
• A proven ability to navigate areas of conflict in an open, positive and proactive way.
• A growth mindset - you understand that competency is not fixed but is enhanced through dedication to continuous learning.
• Ability to communicate clearly and concisely (both written and orally).
• Be outcomes focused and agility to cope with multiple demands and changing priorities in a fast-paced environment.
• Your team-first mindset. Your way of working is collaborative
• A willingness to learn, to adapt to try new things, or take on a different perspective
• Resiliency, as change comes with the territory in a scale up tech environment
• A positive attitude and strong EQ to build and maintain a great connection with your team members across ASC
• The ability to think outside the box and focus on solutions

These certifications or qualifications will come in handy

• College or university degree is desired but not required​

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How We Do Things Here

Our guiding principles, entitled How We Do Things Here, set the tone for life at ASC:

• We delight our customers
• We focus on solutions
• We act with integrity
• We nurture growth
• We put people first

That gives you an idea of how we work together.

Of the many qualities our diverse global team have, one that stands out is our passion for what we do. We take pride in our work and we are constantly learning and adapt to try new things or take on a different perspective. We enjoy and thrive in our rapidly changing environment, which requires flexibility and self-discipline, but, in return, we relish the excitement that we are part of a fast-paced scale up business working on transformative technology.

A bit about what we can offer you

We operate in a high trust environment, and we really walk the talk. We aspire for everyone to be themselves and be comfortable at work, so we put great emphasis on ensuring our people have what they need to be at their best. This includes:

• offering a digital first, fully flexible working style
• having modern tools and systems
• relaxed office hubs in some countries, stocked with free drinks and snacks
• offering extra paid time off for year end closedown and your birthday (with unlimited PTO in the USA)
• rewarding our long serving people with long service leave
• engaging everyone in reward and recognition programs
• access to various wellbeing platforms
• a focus on personal growth, including dedicated ‘tools down’ personal development time
• in the USA, we offer fully funded health benefits, like dental and medical

all within in a diverse, supportive, and inclusive global community.

Key info about our process

• This role is full time, Monday to Friday, and can be based anywhere in New Zealand, although close to Wellington or Palmerston North would be ideal. We'll provide the tools you need to be set up to work well.

• Our process generally consists of 2 online interviews of around an hour each generally with one or two people, and a technical test if the role is in the Engineering space. We'll then request a minimum of two references and require a clean background check from your home country.

• If there is anything we should consider to enable your experience in our recruitment process to be more inclusive, please let us know.

• We'll close applications when we find the right person!

• For agencies, we have a preferred supplier arrangement with various global recruitment partners so please don't send us unsolicited CVs.