Technical Lead

Description

Moshtix is a ticketing business for live music venues and greenfield festivals in Australia and New Zealand. It handles heavy load for some of the largest festivals and best-known venues in the region. The company bought it in 2019, but it still runs on its own roadmap and technology, backed by a Fortune 500 parent.

Universe is the company's self-serve ticketing platform, headquartered in Toronto. It focuses on timed-entry events, exhibitions and immersive experiences, serves long-running attractions, touring exhibitions, festivals and DIY events in 15+ countries, and has its own roadmap and modern stack. The company acquired it in 2015.

This is a permanent Technical Lead role in Auckland. You join the Moshtix engineering department but spend most of your time on Universe, leading engineering across two platforms, two teams and two regions. You will work with tech leads, engineers, product managers and designers in ANZ and around the globe.

The engineering culture rests on trust and autonomy. The team shares knowledge in regular tech talks, treats mistakes as learning, and expects everyone to speak up.

Universe is moving from legacy Ruby on Rails to contract-driven, service-oriented architecture on TypeScript, Node.js, Next.js and Go, using Kafka, Postgres, MongoDB, gRPC, GraphQL and Kubernetes, with strong observability. Moshtix runs a long-standing ASP.NET Core system alongside serverless Node.js/TypeScript services, React front ends on a GraphQL API and event-driven Lambda services on EventBridge, using MSSQL, DynamoDB, S3, Redis, Elasticsearch, Fastly, AWS CDK and GitHub Actions.

The team uses AI across discovery and delivery, not only for writing code. AI speeds the work up, and people stay accountable for the results.

Responsibilities

• Lead the technical direction and delivery of a cross-functional Universe team, owning outcomes from discovery and design through build, release and support.
• Design and build new products and features, and steadily maintain and modernise legacy and core systems.
• Write, review and pair on production code, and set the standard for quality, testing, observability and performance.
• Drive well-documented, contract-driven service and API design, such as protobuf/gRPC and GraphQL, so teams in different time zones can build in parallel.
• Spot where one platform's capabilities could strengthen the other, such as timed-entry capacity management or high-demand general admission on-sales, and make sound build, buy or reuse decisions.
• Build trusted working relationships with Universe engineering and product leaders in ANZ and Toronto, and take part in Universe planning, architecture and design reviews, representing the APAC team.
• Use async working and follow-the-sun handovers to turn the time difference into an advantage.
• Keep the team positive, productive and healthy. Set clear expectations, track progress against objectives and hold regular one-on-ones.
• Mentor engineers and create development opportunities that fit their goals, including how AI is changing good engineering.
• Take part in hiring, from technical assessments and interviews through to final selection.
• Keep stakeholders across Moshtix, Universe and the company informed with regular formal and informal updates, including senior leadership.
• Plan for major on-sales and launches, lead incident response and run blameless post-incident reviews.
• Join on-call and event support rotations.
• Follow the company's change management, quality management, safety and environment policies.
• Help the team adopt AI tools well, and own the result regardless of who or what wrote the first draft.
• Duties, projects and team support may change as business needs change.

Requirements

• 7+ years writing high-quality software in productive engineering teams, including 2+ years as a technical lead or in an equivalent leadership role.
• Deep full-stack experience with TypeScript/JavaScript, Node.js and React, with Next.js a plus, plus professional experience in at least one other language such as Go, Ruby or C.
• Proven experience designing, running and scaling distributed cloud systems (AWS and/or GCP preferred), including event-driven architectures and messaging such as Kafka or EventBridge.
• Strong API design across REST, GraphQL and/or gRPC/protobuf, and solid experience with relational and NoSQL data stores such as Postgres, MSSQL, MongoDB and DynamoDB, plus caching.
• Daily hands-on use of AI coding tools and agents such as Claude Code, GitHub Copilot or Cursor, with a clear view of where they help, where they fall short and how to review their output critically.
• A strong track record in testing, CI/CD and observability, using tools such as Jest, Playwright, GitHub Actions, Argo CD, Docker, Kubernetes or Grafana.
• Experience modernising legacy systems such as Rails or ASP.NET into modern services without disrupting a live business.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including RFCs, design docs and async hand-offs that colleagues on the other side of the world can act on without a meeting.
• Proven success working with teams and stakeholders across multiple time zones.
• The right to work in New Zealand.
• Leads by example through professionalism, humility and follow-through. Facilitates open debate and listens with empathy.
• Works respectfully across a global team, shares knowledge openly and connects Auckland, Toronto and the wider the company group.
• Owns outcomes end to end, including the parts AI helped build.
• Advocates for AI where it delivers value sooner, applies good judgement about where it is used, and builds that judgement in the team.
• Keeps learning as AI reshapes the craft, and helps others do the same.
• Approaches scaling problems pragmatically, stays open to alternatives and weighs all sides before deciding.
• Manages competing priorities across two platforms and many stakeholders without close supervision.
• Understands how live music venues, greenfield festivals and timed-entry attractions differ, and lets that shape technical decisions.
• Bonus: ticketing, e-commerce or high-traffic on-sale experience.
• Bonus: timed-entry, capacity, scheduling or reservation systems.
• Bonus: payments and PCI DSS.
• Bonus: Go, Rust or Elixir.
• Bonus: CDN and edge platforms such as Fastly.
• Bonus: building LLM features into products, or designing agentic workflows and their guardrails, such as MCP or tool-using agents.

Conditions

Permanent, full-time role based in Auckland with a hybrid work model.

Division: Moshtix Technology, working with Universe. Line manager: GM Technology.

Auckland and Toronto are 16 to 18 hours apart depending on daylight saving, so Toronto's working day ends roughly when Auckland's begins. Bridging that gap is a core requirement of the role.

You will regularly work and attend meetings outside standard Auckland hours, typically early mornings to overlap with Toronto's afternoon, and sometimes evenings for planning, incidents or key releases.

Your start or finish time can be adjusted within your working week to balance these sessions.

Occasional international travel, including to Toronto, may be required.

Candidates are welcome regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability status or caring responsibilities.

Benefits

• Relentless Improvement days, where engineers work on whatever they think matters most, from fixing a bug to trying a new idea or tool.