Head of Technology - Enterprise Engineering - Hawthorn East

We've been trusted to serve Aussie communities since 1914 and grown to become a top 30-listed on the ASX with 120,000 team members and a portfolio of iconic brands. At Coles Group, you'll not only get to make a difference to millions of Aussie lives—you'll also get to see your impact.

About the team

Technology is the backbone of our business. Every day, our teams solve complex problems, the solutions help thousands of our fellow team members succeed and makes millions of customers’ lives easier.

About the role

As the Head of Enterprise Engineering Services, your role is to define and govern enterprise-wide quality engineering strategy, standards, roadmaps, tooling and automation frameworks. You will embed quality assurance and continuous testing practices across the SDLC and CI/CD pipelines and build capability across squads and domains to adopt quality-first engineering mindsets.

Furthermore, you will oversee provisioning, management and optimisation of test, staging and pre-production environments.

Key responsibilities include

• Ensure consistent, scalable test strategies for functional, regression, performance and security testing.
• Promote shift-left testing, enabling earlier defect detection and faster delivery cycles.
• Drive continuous innovation in quality engineering platforms and standards.
• Develop reusable, AI-enabled quality engineering assets across the SDLC (incl. test strategy, test and defect management, test design, test data fabrication, test execution etc)
• Provide tooling and accelerators to streamline environment management, improve quality assurance and environment availability
• Collaborate with platform and infrastructure teams to maintain scalable NPE services and drive ongoing cost and usage efficiency, as well as the data, architecture and application owners to support end-to-end workflows.

About you and your skills:

To be successful, you will have the following experience and attributes:

• Extensive commercial experience in engineering leadership roles across quality, integration or platform engineering.
• Deep experience embedding QA, test automation, performance and reliability practices at scale.
• Proven success managing NPE environments and complex integration landscapes in hybrid/cloud environments.
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional teams and influence across delivery domains and platforms.
• Experience in defining engineering standards and embedding practices across Agile delivery teams.
• Strong track record improving software quality, system reliability and delivery efficiency.
• Experience in managing technical risks, production readiness and quality gates in enterprise releases.
• Demonstrated innovative mindset and continuously incorporating emerging technologies and improvement in engineering outcomes (e.g. AI / ML, automation)

• Deep understanding of quality engineering, DevOps, SRE and CI/CD principles.
• Familiarity with tooling such as Selenium, JMeter, Postman, Jenkins, Azure DevOps, Dynatrace, Splunk, etc.
• Strong grasp of integration architectures, including APIs, microservices, middleware and data pipelines.
• Ability to lead through influence, coach technical teams, and build cross-domain alignment.
• Strategic mindset with a hands-on approach to problem-solving and engineering excellence.
• Relevant qualifications in Computer Science, Software Engineering or related field.
• Certifications in Agile, ISTQB, cloud platforms (e.g. Azure, AWS) or architecture frameworks desirable.

What’s in it for you? 

• Flexible working options: We know that work is only one part of your life, so we actively encourage a positive work-life balance and provide hybrid working options to help you achieve it.

• Office perks: Take advantage of our gym facility and fitness classes, free parking, BBQ area, mini-Coles supermarket, fooderie hub where you can sample new products before they hit the shelves, school holiday program and so much more when you come in.

• Discounts: Eligible team members receive 5% discount all year round on your Supermarket and Liquor online and in-store purchases. We also offer additional periods of double discount (10%) at various times throughout the year. As well as hot deals exclusive to team members that translate into additional savings.

• Reward through recognition: Give and receive recognition, linked to our Coles values, through our digital recognition platform ‘mythanks.’ You can accumulate points to redeem in the online shop for exciting gifts and electronic gift cards from an extensive range of retailers.

• Opportunities for learning and development: No matter where you start within our diverse business, you’ll have experiences, exposure, and education to satisfy you. Discover and explore a variety of career development programs and job-specific training.

• Paid parental leave: We understand how important your life outside work is and offer permanent team members paid parental leave to support you in balancing work and family.

• Investment in your future: Our annual team member share plan offer allows eligible team members to make regular pre-tax salary sacrifice deductions to purchase Coles Group shares.

About the recruitment process

We’re continuing to build a gender equitable team, and a culture that is just as diverse, inclusive and welcoming as the communities we serve. We are committed to creating a workplace that is safe and respectful for our team. We encourage applications from people of all ages, cultures (including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples), abilities, sexual orientation and gender identities.

We’re happy to adjust our recruitment process to support candidates with disability. For further information and additional contact details visit the ‘Our Recruitment Process’ section of our careers site or email inclusionrecruitment@coles.com.au

Job ID: 164947 

Employment Type: Full time 

#LI-DIG3