Engineering Manager · Brisbane, QLD

Daniel
Roy
Sanders

Building teams that scale. Shipping products that matter.

15+
Years at Simpro
5×
Promoted
12K+
Customers Served
6
Countries
✉ danielrsanders@gmail.com
🔗 linkedin.com/in/danielrsanders
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"I believe engineering managers exist to remove friction and raise the ceiling for every person on their team."

— Daniel Sanders, Engineering Manager

Key Achievements
🚀
15 Years, One Company

Promoted 5 times at Simpro — from Software Engineer to Engineering Manager on a product now operating in 5+ countries.

×5
🏗️
Team Built from Scratch

Grew Core Engineering Team 3× in under 12 months; led hiring for Principal and Staff Engineer roles.

3×
🤖
AI Initiative Leader

Driving LLM integration and GitHub Copilot adoption across a 40–80 person R&D organisation. Projecting 50% velocity increase.

AI
💰
Budget & Vendor Owner

Manages engineering toolchain budget and leads third-party contract negotiation, achieving avg. 10% cost savings.

10%
📖
Engineering Playbook

Authored org-wide standards used to onboard every engineer across 4 international locations.

×4
Team collaboration
Team Leadership
Engineering
Engineering Excellence
AI
AI Innovation
Career Timeline — Simpro Software (Apr 2010 – Present)
Sep 2024 — Present
Core Engineering Manager
Simpro Software · Brisbane
Leadership
  • Scaled team capacity 300% within 12 months via strategic hires
  • Championing AI-first engineering: OpenAI/Claude APIs + GitHub Copilot across 40–80 engineers
  • Revamped technical interview process; established formal career growth framework
  • Holds full budget responsibility; 10% avg cost savings on vendor contracts
  • Driving 5+ years of legacy debt modernisation for 12,000+ customers
  • Evolved Agile practice from Kanban → Scrum → FaST Agile
Leadership AI Strategy Budget FaST Agile
Apr 2018 — Sep 2024 · 6 yrs 6 mos
Software Architect
Simpro Software · Brisbane + Philippines
Architecture
  • Owned technical vision for flagship product across 6+ countries, ~30 engineers
  • Authored and maintained the Engineering Playbook — source of truth for all R&D teams
  • Championed OWASP Top 10 secure development practices org-wide
  • Flew to Legazpi, Philippines to deliver hands-on technical enablement for offshore team
  • Modernised engineering standards (PSR) across distributed team
Architecture Standards Security Distributed Teams
Nov 2016 — Apr 2018 · 1 yr 6 mos
Development Team Lead – Projects
Simpro Software · Brisbane
Team lead
  • Spearheaded end-to-end project delivery and Agile (Scrum/Kanban) adoption
  • Led migration from legacy tools to Jira and Bitbucket, enabling real-time project visibility
  • Established team norms for predictability and delivery quality
Scrum Jira Project Delivery
Mar 2014 — Nov 2016 · 2 yrs 9 mos
Core Development Supervisor
Simpro Software · Brisbane
  • Managed team of 9 developers across 17 products
  • Implemented sprint rituals, ownership models, and dependency management
  • Mentored junior/mid engineers → multiple progressed to senior/lead roles
Mentoring 9 Developers 17 Products
Apr 2010 — Mar 2014 · 4 yrs
Software Engineer
Simpro Software · Brisbane
Software engineering
  • Re-architected Simpro Enterprise from multi-codebase to single shared codebase — enabling global scale
  • Co-designed the V11 SOAP API and built financial integrations (QuickBooks, MYOB, Sage 50 UK)
  • Delivered enterprise PDF reporting and client customisations in PHP/jQuery
PHP API Design VB.NET Architecture
Technical Skills
AI & Modern
Claude / LLMs
GitHub Copilot
MCP / AI Tooling
Languages
PHP
TypeScript / JS
Python
Frontend
Angular
React
CSS / Sass
Database
PostgreSQL
MySQL
AWS RDS/Aurora
Cloud / Infra
AWS Lambda/EC2
EKS / Serverless
IAM / EFS
Tools & Methods
Jira / Confluence
DataDog / Grafana
FaST / Scrum
Early Career (2005 – 2010)
2009
2005 – 2009
PHP / MySQL Developer

CRM systems and freelance web development projects. Foundational years building real products for real clients.

2007
Technical Support
Tier 1/2 Support Engineer

TelstraClear: customer-facing technical fault resolution. Built instincts for empathy, communication, and systematic debugging.

🔥
Current Role
Chief Fire Warden

Chief Fire Warden for the Brisbane office (300+ staff). Founding member of the company's Health and Safety Committee.

Education & Certifications
Manukau Institute of Technology
Bachelor of Engineering Technology
Feb 2004 – Nov 2005
Manukau Institute of Technology
Diploma – Computer Network Engineering
Feb 2002 – Jul 2004
University of Auckland
Teaching Skills — Lectures, Tutorials & Lab Demonstrations
CCNA
Cisco Certified Networking Associate
OWASP
Secure Software Practices — Top 10
FaST Agile
Fluid Scaling Technology Methodology
Sastrify
SaaS Vendor Contract Negotiation