VP of Engineering

Acorn Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

Backed by a recent Series A funding round and now scaling rapidly, we're looking for a proven VP of Engineering to help scale our world-class product and team to the next stage of growth and global category leadership. The Vice-President of Engineering is a key leadership role responsible for scaling Acorn PLMS's engineering organisation as we grow into a global category leader. This role leads the Engineering function, overseeing team leadership, technical execution, and organisational growth to support our ambitious product roadmap and commercial goals.

As a senior cross-functional leader, the VP of Engineering will work closely with product, design, and executive stakeholders to ensure delivery excellence, scalable systems, and strong alignment between technical innovation and business strategy. This role is instrumental in shaping the next phase of Acorn's growth, evolving our engineering operations, developing leadership capability within the team, and driving innovation that accelerates our mission.

We are seeking a seasoned VP of Engineering to help scale our world-class product and team to the next stage of growth. You'll take the reins from our CTO on people leadership and operational excellence, allowing them to focus on innovation and long-term product strategy. You'll bring a blend of startup scrappiness and enterprise-scale experience to drive technical execution, build high-performing teams, and ensure Acorn's engineering organisation is a force multiplier in our scale journey to $20M+ ARR and beyond.

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2. Leadership: Sets vision, inspires teams, and drives organisational resilience, adaptability, and growth through strategic change. Level: Expert - Shapes organisational resilience, inspiring teams to thrive amidst disruption and positioning Acorn as an employer of choice
   
3. Strategic Resource Allocation: Aligns people, budgets, and technology resources to achieve ambitious growth and scale goals efficiently. Level: Advanced - Develops long-term resource and organisational design strategies for Engineering aligned with business goals and scaling plans
   
4. Innovation and Disruptive Technologies Strategy: Defines, evaluates, and integrates emerging technologies to drive product differentiation and market leadership. Level: Advanced - Defines technology roadmaps leveraging disruptive technologies to deliver on long-term product vision
   
5. Application Development: Leads design and delivery of software solutions that meet business needs and enable scalable product growth. Level: Advanced - Drives best practices in application design and development across engineering teams to ensure delivery excellence
   
6. Stakeholder Management: Builds trusted partnerships with internal and external stakeholders to align engineering execution with strategic objectives. Level: Expert - Cultivates strategic partnerships with board-level and industry stakeholders to drive transformational outcomes and influence market positioning
   

• Lead, grow, and mentor a team of engineers, managers, and tech leads across Canberra
  
• Partner with the CTO to execute on the long-term technical roadmap and architectural direction
  
• Own engineering hiring strategy and org design as we scale from 20 to 50+ engineers globally
  
• Implement world-class development practices, delivery cadences, and systems to support scale
  
• Drive predictability in execution, technical excellence, and continuous improvement across teams
  
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Product, Design, and Go-To-Market teams to ensure delivery aligned to strategic goals
  
• Act as the face of Engineering with the Executive team, Board, and strategic partners as needed
  

• Must have: Demonstrated success in scaling engineering teams from