Location

Collingwood, Melbourne (hybrid)

Employment type

Permanent, full time

Salary range

$120,000 to $140,000 + superannuation, with an equity conversation for the right person

Reports to

Dave McManus, Founder and Director

Direct scope

Delivery team including Melbourne-based operations and offshore engineering About Lightning Ventures

Lightning Ventures is a Melbourne-based AI and custom software agency. Over the past four years we have shipped more than 80 applications for mid-market Australian businesses, most incorporating LLMs, and we are increasingly focused on agentic AI systems and MCP server development. We build on Bubble.io, Xano, FlutterFlow, Supabase, and custom full-stack code.

We are at a growth inflection point. Enterprise deals are landing, the delivery engine needs a leader, and the founder needs to get out of the day-to-day so he can focus on sales and growth. That is where you come in.

The Role

You will own delivery at Lightning Ventures end to end. That means running client engagements, leading product strategy on those engagements, managing resourcing and profitability across the project portfolio, and holding the quality bar. The founder retains sales and overall P&L.; Everything between a signed deal and a delighted client is yours.

This is a player-coach role. You will set the delivery system and run it, but you will also be in the room with clients: leading discovery, validating requirements, proposing technical approaches, and making product calls. If you want a pure people-management seat or a pure IC seat, this is not it. If you want both, read on.

What You Will Own1.

Client

Engagements and Product Strategy

Lead discovery with new clients: workshops, requirements validation, and scoping that engineering can actually build from

Set product strategy per engagement, including feature prioritisation, roadmap shape, and tech stack recommendations





Act as the senior client-facing voice across active projects, including handling scope conversations and pushing back on scope creep commercially and gracefully

Translate business problems into build-ready specifications, working fluently with data models, API design, and integration architecture

2.

Delivery

Leadership

Run the delivery cadence across all projects on a fixed two-sprint-per-month rhythm

Enforce delivery non-negotiables: developer scoping before any quote, written client sign-off, and explicit sprint commitments

Manage and develop the delivery team, including offshore engineers and contractors, and hold the quality bar on everything that ships

Own client communication standards so clients always know where their project stands

3.

Agency

Operations

Own resource planning and capacity across the portfolio (we use Runn), matching people to projects and flagging crunch before it happens

Track and report project profitability, utilisation, and delivery health to the founder

Manage contractor relationships, engagement terms, and performance

Build and document the delivery playbook so the agency scales on systems, not heroics

What Success Looks Like in 12 Months

Every project scoped by a developer before it is quoted, with written client sign-off, on a consistent sprint cadence The founder is out of day-to-day delivery entirely and focused on sales

Project profitability visible per engagement, with utilisation tracked and healthy





Clients renew and refer because delivery is predictable and communication is proactive A documented delivery system that a growing team can run without you being the bottleneck

About You

Agency DNA. You have 5 to 10 years in product or delivery roles, with meaningful time at a lean digital, product, or ad agency (roughly 5 to 20 people). You know what it means to juggle a portfolio, protect margin, and keep multiple clients happy at once.

Product management craft. You have run discovery, written specs, prioritised roadmaps, and shipped digital products end to end. You have opinions about how product should be built and you can defend them.

Technical fluency. You do not need to write production code, but you can read a database schema, reason about API calls and integrations, and make informed build-versus-buy and stack decisions.

Experience with low-code platforms (Bubble, Xano, FlutterFlow) or AI-powered products is a strong plus.

Commercial instincts. You think in margin, utilisation, and scope. You can tell a client no in a way that strengthens the relationship.

Sleeves rolled up. You move fast, you are comfortable with ambiguity, and you would rather fix the problem than write a memo about it. Big-company process for its own sake frustrates you.

Leadership without ego. You develop people, give direct feedback, and take responsibility when things go sideways.

What We Offer A genuine seat at the leadership table of a growing agency, reporting directly to the founder

$120,000 to $140,000 base plus superannuation, calibrated to experience An equity conversation for the right person as part of our leadership equity program

Real scope: you will run delivery, not assist with it

Hybrid working from our Richmond studio, with flexibility that treats you like an adult

Front-row exposure to agentic AI and MCP development, some of the most interesting build work happening in Australia right now

Free gym membership working out of a state of the art health complex

📌 Head of Service Delivery (Melbourne)
🏢 Lightning Ventures ⚡️
📍 Melbourne