This is a senior lead development role that I think will suit someone who wants to stay close to the code without their next career move requiring them to spend half their life in performance reviews and 1:1s.

They’ve got a sizeable engineering function, but development happens in much smaller pods of around 4–5. This person will effectively be the technical senior within one of those pods.

I'm also very open to the pseudo-leads out there...

You know who you are.

Senior Developer on paper. Lead Developer whenever something breaks. Haha.

You’re already mentoring and coaching other developers, reviewing their work, unblocking people, challenging technical decisions and generally getting tagged in Teams whenever somebody says, “Does anyone know why this does this?”

You just never got the official title.

You’ll still be hands-on and building software, but there’s a bigger expectation around the people and engineering decisions around you. Generally being the person others can lean on when things get complicated.

No direct reports. No performance reviews. You’re still an engineer.

They describe their developers as full-stack, but I wouldn't get too hung up on that either.

If you're particularly robust on the backend and can comfortably navigate your way around a frontend when needed, that's absolutely fine.



Or vice versa. Nobody needs you to be equally brilliant at every layer of the stack.

They're also already using AI pretty heavily across engineering... Copilot, Claude etc.

They're not particularly interested in AI just so they can tell everyone they're using AI.

If it helps engineers solve problems and get useful things into customers' hands faster, great.

If it just gives them more PRs, more dashboards and confidence-shaped compost... less exciting.

Ultimately, I'm much more interested in finding someone with genuine technical depth who can make the engineers around them better than someone who happens to tick every technology box.

If you're already officially / or unofficially doing the Lead Developer job and fancy finally getting the title to match, this could be worth a conversation.

Please APPLY or contact Jordan Ricketts for more information.

[email protected]

At BLACKROC Recruitment, we are committed to fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion.

We welcome applications from individuals of diverse backgrounds, including those with lived experiences.

If you require any adjustments during the recruitment process, please don't hesitate to reach out to the BLACKROC Consultant.

📌 Lead Software Developer (Brisbane)
🏢 BLACKROC Recruitment
📍 Brisbane