Engineering Manager Jobs in Australia (No ghost jobs, direct from employers)

Pros: A lot of the people are genuinely lovely - warm, talented, and good fun.

Cons: The lack of transparency around strategic direction, senior role appointments, and overall business decisions ripples through every layer of the business. Favouritism is rampant and not particularly subtle. While the business keeps a mild, yet fading appearance of internal openness, in reality, raising concerns - especially about leadership - is not only not appreciated, but punished. Values and mission are the main draws when you first join the company, yet they’ve been hollowed out and replaced with corporate buzzwords that mean very little. The disregard for people development, wellbeing and DEI has grown increasingly obvious, and complying with the demise of people-centric values and practices while keeping an outward appearance of enthusiasm is no longer optional - it’s the key to survival. Speed is fetishised in a way that does real and long-lasting damage. Reactive decisions get rebranded as bold ones. Competitor panic passes for agility. The result is that teams are permanently sprinting without knowing the destination, working at pace without a clear rationale, and absorbing a level of pressure that isn't sustainable. Burnout isn't a risk - it's a predictable and common outcome, and one the business seems uninterested in preventing. Accountability is another casualty. When something doesn't work, responsibility dissolves - passed around until nobody owns it, and then quietly dropped in favour of the ‘’next big thing’’. There's no honest post-mortem culture, no structured learning, no meaningful reflection. Leadership seems to have developed a remarkable talent for looking directly at a problem and choosing not to see it. Managers and their teams often seem to be operating with fundamentally different expectations of one another, and this breakdown repeats itself across the organisation. Through all the empty rethoric about pace and autonomy, staff experience something much closer to surveillance and micro-management than trust. A business that positions data as its defining value makes its most consequential people decisions purely on the basis of executive preference. People management practices are anything but transparent, seemingly taking advantage of gaps in employment law to avoid formal layoffs and the subsequent obligations. Ultimately, the company's greatest intolerance is for honesty. Speaking plainly, raising concerns, and offering a view that wasn't asked for results in becoming expendable, no matter how hard you work or how competent and committed you are.

Pros: Lovely people to work with day in day out; have made some life-long friends through trauma-bonding.

Cons: 1. Strategic Fragmentation & C-Suite Misalignment There is a fundamental lack of alignment at Senior Leadership level regarding the company’s core strategic priority — specifically the unresolved tension between Energy Retail and Flexibility solutions. This is not a healthy debate; it is a structural fracture. Goals shift mid-cycle, priorities are rewritten without warning, and departments operate in silos that rarely communicate, let alone collaborate. Within teams, the lack of visibility into parallel workstreams is startling. Employees are routinely forced into internal “fact-finding missions” just to understand what the business is doing. This is not agility. It is disorganisation masquerading as dynamism. 2. Executive Instability & Consolidation by Convenience Leadership turnover and role consolidation create ongoing instability. A high-profile CTO appointment dissolved within days of being announced, followed by chaotic and unclear messaging when the person pulled out of the role. C-suite roles are frequently merged and reshaped (e.g., CMO to CPO to CPTO), much like a game of leadership musical chairs suggesting improvisation rather than deliberate, expertise-led design. More concerning is the perception of cronyism. Senior roles have been created without transparent hiring processes; positions that were neither publicly advertised nor subjected to necessary due diligence. The optics are damaging and create tensions within teams. Favouritism is rife, with mini-groups set up within departments and work silos created. The company runs like a school playground: those that are popular, and those that are perceived not to be. Meanwhile, the CEO is not a factor in major decision-making, with influence visibly deferred to board-level interests — particularly the founder of the business who is both chair of the board and majority shareholder. The SLT seems more focused on trying to rehabilitating his personal profile than stabilising the business. It is particularly disheartening as the CEO is a woman with a vast depth of knowledge in and around the business, however she’s often sidelined for more charismatic characters. 3. Narrative vs. Reality: “Energy Intelligence” in Name Only Externally, the organisation positions itself as a “data-first” Energy Intelligence leader. Internally, the infrastructure required to support that claim is materially lacking. Robust data frameworks are absent. Reporting is inconsistent. Insight generation is fragmented. The phrase “intelligent data” functions more as marketing veneer than technical truth. This disconnect erodes credibility — both within the industry and among employees who see the gap firsthand. 4. Operational Reactivity Disguised as Pace Product and marketing decisions are frequently reactive — driven more by competitor anxiety than by a disciplined internal roadmap. Impulsive, off-the-cuff decisions are branded as “fast-paced,” but the operational reality is a constant sense of urgency without any concrete rationale linked to the business, or even team goals. Teams are expected to execute at speed without coherent business cases, creating sustained pressure and inevitable burnout. 5. Leadership Visibility with an Accountability Vacuum There is a distinct lack of subject-matter expertise at senior levels. Decision-making is top-down, instinct-led, and often disconnected from professional best practice. Campaigns are greenlit based on desire rather than data. Data-driven decision-making, despite the company’s rhetoric, is effectively non-existent. Accountability does not seem to matter as ownership is unclear and constantly pushed to someone else. When outcomes underperform, there is no structured reflection — only a pivot to the next initiative. Frequent concerns are consistently raised by staff and are regularly ignored at SLT level. There is a deep culture of ostrich-ing; burying heads in the sand to avoid answering the deep, persistent questions that are repeatedly raised. 6. Acquisition Obsession at the Expense of Existing Customers There is a relentless, almost frantic pursuit of new customers, while existing commitments are neglected. The imbalance gives a deep sense of strategic malpractice. Repeated concerns were raised throughout 2025 — in team meetings, town halls, and leadership Slack channels — highlighting the reputational and operational risk of prioritising acquisition over delivery. These concerns were met not with reconsideration, but with reiteration of “the strategy.” 7. Execution Without Infrastructure Ambitious targets are set without the data, tooling, or technical roadmap required to achieve them. Operational teams are expected to deliver “intelligent” solutions using incomplete or non-existent datasets — effectively sailing in the dark. The rebrand to “The Energy Intelligence Platform” is aspirational at best and misleading at worst. There is no consistent evidence of intelligence in strategic planning, nor in the enablement provided to the capable teams tasked with delivery. Additionally, SLT frequently rely on generic AI-written documents to justify their position - often with no context or deep awareness of the subject matter needed to create compelling and interesting narratives around the brand. 8. Erosion of Mission & Cultural Regression The company’s original sustainability-led mission has been diluted into an empty, generic, execution-heavy value framework. The shift away from people-centric principles has had tangible cultural consequences with a deep nosedive in morale. Visible commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion has been eradicated and when this was pointed out, the response received was sub par and hollow. Constructive skepticism is outrightly ignored and talking about your opinions is actively discouraged. Cultural compliance and loyalty is highly rewarded; principled challenge is not. 9. Inconsistent Performance Culture Structured performance management is largely absent. Ongoing feedback is minimal, resulting in avoidable “surprises” during formal reviews. Communication gaps between line managers and team members are large and significant, and these gaps are mirrored across the wider organisation. There is no culture of progress or development from what I experienced, and a rooted behavioural system of micro-management and surveillance on operational level staff. 10. Communication Breakdown & Office-First Mandate Trust has truly eroded into dust. The redefinition of salary bands which ultimately left the workforce in an arguably worse off position, and the introduction of a rigid office-first mandate, were brought in despite employee-led data from multiple reputable sources demonstrating the positive effectiveness of remote and hybrid models. When pressed, SLT acknowledged there was no data supporting the new position of “office-first” — it was simply their preference. A company that claims to be data-first should not make culture-defining decisions based purely on instinct and desire; they will lose key members of the workforce if the policy is upheld. 11. Speculative Talent Management Practices There are credible concerns regarding headcount strategy and tenure management. Policies that disproportionately impact employees under the two-year mark, framed as “performance issues” and therefore open the option to be immediately dismissed, suggest a tactical avoidance of formal redundancy processes. The optics around this leave a strong impression that the company cares more about the preservation of investor confidence over fair people management. OVERALL I didn't stand a chance. The company has a deep set problem: if you're open with your views and opinions you are likely to be looked at unfavourably and often labelled "problematic". Loyalty is gold at Kaluza - critical thinking is not valued, or indeed recommeded, in any way.

Pros: - Great people - Amazing mission - Complex problems

Cons: - Leadership/Execs are not transparent and do not care about employees or the mission anymore - Constant changes in recent year: around pay bands, performance reviews, promotions, and even company goals/direction. - Very waterfall approach to projects - It can feel like a consultancy, where we give the clients what they want, rather than having an existing product that we're selling to clients.