Head of Engineering

Global marketplaces — Amazon, Walmart, eBay, Shopify and over a hundred others — are the engines of modern commerce. But the data sits locked inside each channel, fragmented and rarely adding up to a clear picture.

MerchantSpring is the API-first data infrastructure for the businesses that operate, advise on, and build for digital commerce. We consolidate cross-channel marketplace data into a single source of truth that our customers reach through a visualisation platform, an API gateway, MCP tools and embeddable widgets.

We are profitable, self-funded, and seven years in — scaling on our own revenue rather than someone else’s runway. We are headquartered in Australia with a growing presence in Kuala Lumpur, and we operate as a single team across sites.

Today the platform spans 120+ ecommerce channels, manages roughly 12TB of data across 35,000 seller accounts in 29 countries, serving agencies, enterprise brands, and ecosystem and technology partners.

The role

We are looking for a Director of Engineering to take full ownership of our engineering function and lead the next chapter: our evolution into a true API-first data platform. You will inherit a team of 11 engineers across our ETL, API and AI/MCP squads, with a structured handover from the outgoing Head of Engineering, and own the technical vision, the architecture, and the culture that carries us from startup to scale-up.

This is a builder’s leadership role. We want someone who leads from within the architecture — setting direction, making the hard technical calls, and rolling up their sleeves to code when it helps the team move or unblocks a problem. As the team grows, the role is expected to evolve further toward organisational leadership, and we say so openly because we want someone who wants that trajectory.

What you’ll own

• Technical vision and architecture.Translate business goals into a technical roadmap, set direction across the squads, and own the architectural bets — with our API-first data layer as the centrepiece.
• Platform scale.Take our API and data platform from where they are today to scale: more channels, more volume, and more external builders relying on our endpoints, MCP tools and widgets.
• Infrastructure economics. Own the unit economics of the platform. A large and growing share of our cost base sits in database and infrastructure spend, and you will be accountable for managing and driving it down as we scale with a focus on database cost: 
• TimescaleDB compression, retention and continuous aggregates
• Postgres query and index optimisation and right-sizing
• MongoDB indexing and sharding.
• Data integrity and reliability. 35,000 accounts depend on financially accurate data. Own incident practices and resilience that keep serious problems rare — and provide visible, decisive leadership on the rare occasions they aren’t.
• The team culture. Hire, mentor and grow engineers; set delivery standards and best practices from documentation to deployment; and build a team where engineers want to do their best work.
• Set direction.Provide oversight and guidance to talented, junior teams in AI/MCP to DevOps and infrastructure.
• Partnership and foresight. Bridge Engineering with Sales and Client Success so feedback, escalations and market signals reach the roadmap, and engage the CEO and co-founder proactively on technical strategy.

• A hands-on architect-leader. Deep, current credibility in data and platform engineering: relational and document databases (Postgres and MongoDB), time-series data at scale, API platform design, and AWS. You code when it matters, and add value with breadth to give direction across squads.
• Commercially minded about infrastructure. You think in unit economics and have a track record of optimising and reducing database and infrastructure costs at scale.
• A people-first leader.You sit with your team, champion them, take an active interest in their development, and are the role model the junior engineers around you learn from.
• An owner.You take end-to-end accountability and step up decisively when things go wrong.
• A culture builder by instinct. You make team cohesion happen proactively: we fund it, and you drive it. We should never have to tell you to invest in your team.
• Pragmatic and data-driven.You welcome rigorous debate, explain the rationale behind technical trade-offs, and tackle problems head-on with commercial awareness.
• Grounded in the customer. You are curious about the problems our customers face so that technical priorities stay tied to user needs.
• Resilient in ambiguity. You manage competing priorities and do not give up when the path is unclear.
• Transferable domain experience.Scaled a multi-tenant, high-volume data and API platform through rapid growth in any industry.
• Relevant experience. Exposure to marketplaces, ecommerce, or the Amazon SP-API ecosystem is valuable, though not required, as sharp leaders pick it up in months. 

Why join MerchantSpring?

• Own the function: How we build, what gets prioritised, and where we place our bets are yours to call and defend.
• A leadership seat:You have a direct line to the CEO and a hand in company strategy and direction.
• Hard problems, high stakes:Your work directly shapes the platform’s reliability, scalability and cost, and therefore our competitive advantage and commercial outcomes.
• Build a lasting legacy:Define the architecture, culture, processes and standards that guide engineering as we scale, and lead a talented team within a modern, cloud-native stack.
• Stability with autonomy: Be part of a profitable, self-funded business scaling on its own terms. Experience the freedom of a startup without the runway anxiety.
• Travel: Occasional trips to Melbourne a few of times a year, with colleagues including the CEO and co-founder travelling to KL for face-to-face time. You will need to be able to travel to Australia, personally and with a valid visa.