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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8" />
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
<meta name="description" content="Jackson Bates — Engineering Manager, Melbourne. Empathetic leadership, product thinking, pragmatic delivery." />
<title>Jackson Bates</title>
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<script data-goatcounter="https://jacksonbates.goatcounter.com/count"
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/* ── ANIMATIONS ── */
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.hero-links { animation: fadeUp 0.6s 0.3s ease both; }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<nav>
<a class="nav-brand" href="#hero">Jackson Bates</a>
<ul class="nav-links">
<li><a href="#about">About</a></li>
<li><a href="#philosophy">Philosophy</a></li>
<li><a href="#experience">Experience</a></li>
<li><a href="#thinking">Writing</a></li>
<li><a href="https://linkedin.com/in/jackson-bates">LinkedIn</a></li>
</ul>
</nav>
<!-- HERO -->
<section id="hero">
<p class="hero-eyebrow">Engineering Leader · Melbourne</p>
<h1>Jackson<br /><em>Bates</em></h1>
<p class="hero-sub">
I lead engineering teams that ship things that matter — with clarity,
care, and a healthy intolerance for unnecessary complexity.
</p>
<div class="hero-links">
<a class="btn btn-filled" href="#philosophy">How I work</a>
<a class="btn" href="#experience">Experience</a>
<a class="btn" href="https://blog.jacksonbates.com">Writing</a>
</div>
</section>
<!-- ABOUT -->
<section id="about">
<p class="section-label">Background</p>
<h2>A different kind of path in.</h2>
<div class="story-grid">
<div>
<p>
I came to software engineering through teaching. For over a decade
I worked as a Senior Teacher, Head of English, and Coordinator of
Learning Technologies across schools in the UK and Australia. That
background isn't a footnote — it's the lens through which I lead.
</p>
<p>
When I made the transition into tech, I had to learn fast, prove
myself quickly, and earn credibility in rooms where I was the least
experienced person. I know what that feels like, and it shapes how I
support and develop the people on my teams.
</p>
<p>
Since then I've worked as a consultant at a machine learning company,
led engineering at a social-impact startup through rapid growth,
serving as its CTO, and now I'm an Engineering Manager at Atomi — an
Australian EdTech platform used by high school students and teachers
across the country. The contexts have varied. The approach hasn't
changed much.
</p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="story-pull">
"The best engineering managers I've met thought like teachers —
always asking: does this person understand? Can I help them get
there?"
</p>
<p style="margin-top: 1.5rem; color: var(--mid); font-size: 0.95rem;">
I was also a long-time, early contributor to freeCodeCamp, the open
source learning platform, where I've written, moderated, and helped
mentor thousands of people learning to code.
</p>
</div>
</div>
</section>
<!-- PHILOSOPHY -->
<section id="philosophy">
<p class="section-label">Leadership Philosophy</p>
<h2>How I think about the work.</h2>
<div class="philosophy-items">
<div class="philosophy-item">
<span class="philosophy-number">01</span>
<div>
<h3>Empathy is a professional skill, not a soft one.</h3>
<p>
Understanding what someone actually needs — as opposed to what
they're saying — is one of the highest-leverage things a leader
can do. That applies to engineers on my team, stakeholders pushing
back on timelines, and users who can't articulate why the product
frustrates them. I take it seriously.
</p>
<p>
But empathy without accountability is just avoidance wearing a
friendly face. When someone isn't performing, I have the
conversation early and directly. I'd rather have an uncomfortable
discussion now than a damaging one later — for them and for the
team. I've learned from the mistake of not doing this in the past.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="philosophy-item">
<span class="philosophy-number">02</span>
<div>
<h3>Engineering managers should understand the product.</h3>
<p>
I'm not a product manager, and I'm not trying to be. But an EM
who treats delivery as the only success metric is trying to ride a bike using only one pedal.
The question isn't just "did we ship it?" — it's "did
we ship the right thing, and are we paying attention to whether it's
working?"
</p>
<p>
I push my teams to have opinions about what they're building. I
think that makes the engineering better, the product conversations
more honest, and the roadmap decisions more grounded.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="philosophy-item">
<span class="philosophy-number">03</span>
<div>
<h3>Pragmatism means knowing which battles to pick.</h3>
<p>
Perfect is the enemy of shipped, but so is shipped-too-fast.
I've seen teams grind to a halt under technical debt they never
addressed, and I've seen other teams gold-plate code that got
deleted six months later. Neither is obviously better.
</p>
<p>
The job is to make considered trade-offs, document them honestly,
and revisit them. I'm not dogmatic about process or tooling. I'm
dogmatic about being deliberate.
</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="philosophy-item">
<span class="philosophy-number">04</span>
<div>
<h3>Good culture is built in the small moments.</h3>
<p>
It shows up in how you run a retrospective when the sprint went
badly. In whether people feel safe flagging a problem before it
becomes a crisis. In whether feedback flows in all directions or
only downward.
</p>
<p>
I think about this stuff consciously, not as a box-ticking
exercise. The teams I'm proudest of have been ones where people
genuinely looked out for each other — and that doesn't happen by
accident.
</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</section>
<!-- EXPERIENCE -->
<section id="experience">
<p class="section-label">Experience</p>
<h2>Where I've been.</h2>
<div class="experience-list">
<div class="experience-item">
<div>
<p class="exp-role">Engineering Manager</p>
<p class="exp-company">Atomi</p>
<p class="exp-description">
Engineering Manager for a squad of five engineers spanning the
Authoring and Learning Experience domains at an EdTech platform
serving high school students and teachers across Australia.
The work I'm most proud of here is cultural rather than technical —
shifting the team toward genuine ownership of their domains, building
the kind of trust with our PM and designer that makes scoping
conversations crisp rather than fraught, and raising the product fluency
of engineers who now have real opinions about what they're building.
The result is a team that moves quickly without cutting corners, and
collaborates well enough that that pace is sustainable.
</p>
</div>
<div class="exp-date">Aug 2022 — Present</div>
</div>
<div class="experience-item">
<div>
<p class="exp-role">Lead Engineer -> Chief Technical Officer</p>
<p class="exp-company">Grace Papers</p>
<p class="exp-description">
Joined as the first in-house engineer, inheriting a functional but
fragile agency-built platform with no tests, difficult maintenance,
and a company full of manual processes that the product barely supported.
Over three years I turned that proof-of-concept into a stable, maintainable
production system — building out automated testing, fixing the foundations,
and streamlining internal workflows that had been held together with goodwill
and spreadsheets.
</p>
<p class="exp-description">
I also grew the technical team to five, hiring two juniors, a senior engineer,
and a data scientist. By the time I was appointed CTO, I was accountable for
technical strategy and platform architecture while working closely with a product
agency to envision a new suite of coaching tools.
</p>
</div>
<div class="exp-date">Dec 2019 — Aug 2022</div>
</div>
<div class="experience-item">
<div>
<p class="exp-role">Software Engineer · Consultant</p>
<p class="exp-company">Silverpond</p>
<p class="exp-description">
Built web applications supporting machine learning work across
industries including large-scale asset inspection, wildlife
conservation, and retail. Fast context-switching, diverse
stakeholders, and the kind of problems that don't have obvious
answers. I quickly learned the value of talking to customers
and listening carefully to what they needed to build excellent
products.
</p>
</div>
<div class="exp-date">Jul 2018 — Dec 2019</div>
</div>
<div class="experience-item">
<div>
<p class="exp-role">Contributor · Moderator · Writer</p>
<p class="exp-company">freeCodeCamp</p>
<p class="exp-description">
A sustained, voluntary investment in a community I care about.
Writing articles, moderating forums, and helping people navigate
the intimidating early stages of learning to code. I didn't do it for the
swag, but the freeCodeCamp Top Contributor backpack Quincy sent me is
still one of my treasured posessions!
</p>
</div>
<div class="exp-date">Sep 2016 — Dec 2020</div>
</div>
<div class="experience-item">
<div>
<p class="exp-role">Senior Teacher · Head of English · Coordinator, Learning Technologies</p>
<p class="exp-company">Various Schools, UK & Australia</p>
<p class="exp-description">
Over a decade in secondary education shaped how I communicate,
how I mentor, and how I think about people learning difficult
things under pressure. I reference this career more often than
you'd expect, and I think that's a feature.
</p>
</div>
<div class="exp-date">2005 — 2017</div>
</div>
</div>
</section>
<!-- WRITING / THINKING -->
<section id="thinking">
<p class="section-label">Writing</p>
<h2>Things I've thought about publicly.</h2>
<div class="writing-grid">
<a class="writing-card" href="http://podcast.freecodecamp.org/ep-83-from-high-school-english-teacher-to-software-engineer-at-a-machine-learning-company">
<p class="writing-card-tag">Podcast</p>
<h3>From English teacher to software engineer</h3>
<p>The freeCodeCamp podcast — on career change, open source, and what teaching gave me that a bootcamp couldn't.</p>
</a>
<a class="writing-card" href="https://open.spotify.com/episode/0wVPwcHGavraYamHPBfu0N">
<p class="writing-card-tag">Podcast</p>
<h3>How to attract and retain engineering talent</h3>
<p>A panel conversation on hiring and retention — particularly the challenges that are specific to small, fast-moving teams.</p>
</a>
<a class="writing-card" href="https://blog.jacksonbates.com/blog/feedback-as-macronutrients/">
<p class="writing-card-tag">Leadership</p>
<h3>Feedback as macronutrients</h3>
<p>A framework for thinking about the different types of feedback — and why a diet of only one kind leaves people malnourished.</p>
</a>
<a class="writing-card" href="https://blog.jacksonbates.com/blog/2020-11-20-running/">
<p class="writing-card-tag">Craft</p>
<h3>What running taught me about persistence and programming</h3>
<p>The parallels between physical endurance and the patience required to actually get good at something.</p>
</a>
</div>
<p style="margin-top: 2rem; font-size: 0.9rem; color: var(--mid);">
More at <a href="https://blog.jacksonbates.com" style="color: var(--accent); text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 1px solid var(--accent-muted);">blog.jacksonbates.com</a>.
</p>
</section>
<!-- CONTACT -->
<section id="contact">
<p class="section-label">Get in touch</p>
<h2>Let's talk.</h2>
<p style="color: var(--mid); max-width: 480px; margin: 0 auto 1rem;">
If you're thinking about a senior engineering leadership role and want
to have a conversation, I'm open to it.
</p>
<!-- Replace with your actual email or a contact form -->
<a class="contact-email" href="https://linkedin.com/in/jackson-bates">
linkedin.com/in/jackson-bates
</a>
<div class="social-row">
<a href="https://github.com/JacksonBates">GitHub</a>
<a href="https://aus.social/web/@JacksonBates">Mastodon</a>
<a href="https://youtube.com/JacksonBates">YouTube</a>
<a href="https://blog.jacksonbates.com">Blog</a>
</div>
</section>
<footer>
<span>Jackson Bates · Melbourne, Australia</span>
<span>Engineering leadership · EdTech · TypeScript</span>
</footer>
</body>
</html>