Halter is a New Zealand startup that builds solar-powered smart collars for cattle enabling remote herding, virtual fencing and health monitoring.
ABOUT HALTER At Halter, we’re on a mission to enable farmers and graziers to run the most productive and sustainable operations. Our customers are using Halter to break free from the time-intensive constraints of conventional practices. Imagine watching 500 cattle stand up and walk calmly towards their next break? No quad bikes, no dogs, no fences. Just a group of cattle walking at their own pace. People say it looks like magic. Our customers are revolutionizing grazing with Halter. It's changing lives and transforming an industry. People join Halter to do meaningful work. By joining us you’ll be solving challenging problems within a talented team and a culture built for high performance. Our team out-think, out-work and out-care. We’re committed to delivering real change in the world - this isn’t easy, and in truth, we love that it’s hard. We’re backed to deliver on a mission that matters by Tier 1 investors including Founders Fund https://foundersfund.com, Bessemer Venture Partners https://www.bvp.com/, BOND, https://www.bondcap.com/ DCVC https://www.dcvc.com/, Blackbird https://www.blackbird.vc/, Promus Ventures https://www.promusventures.com/, Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck and Icehouse ventures https://www.icehouseventures.co.nz/?utm_term=icehouse%20ventures&utm_campaign=Brand+Keywords&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=4064636360&hsa_cam=16902737884&hsa_grp=134004309485&hsa_ad=592971340272&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=kwd-1082530126230&hsa_kw=icehouse%20ventures&hsa_mt=b&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gclid=Cj0KCQjw2v-gBhC1ARIsAOQdKY0J0DepRVFDmjQlAkJPbZuQnLSA5UVzUzOXYiPxkjX-SeVa513_BhkaAr-MEALw_wcB. To find out more, visit our LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/halter-limited & Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lifeathalter/. ABOUT THE ROLE We're looking for an Engineering Manager to lead our wireless network engineering team - the team that keeps one of the world's largest private IoT networks connected. Over a million devices across New Zealand, Australia, the US and Canada, spanning LoRa, cellular, and satellite direct-to-device, running on remote infrastructure in some of the hardest terrain there is. This isn't a pure delivery or pure people role. You'll be in the work: shaping the network architecture, weighing in on spectrum strategy and link budgets, reviewing the automation that runs our tower fleet, and helping your team do the best work of their careers. You'll need to hold the technical bar high while creating the space for others to grow. We're solving connectivity problems that haven't been solved before - keeping livestock connected hundreds of kilometres from the nearest town, where there's often no coverage at all. It's a role that demands absolute ownership: someone who can take a blurry problem, create clarity, and lead a team to nail it. THE KIND OF PROBLEMS YOUR TEAM SOLVES Halter is one system: hardware, software, and AI, running live on real farms. The wireless network team owns the connectivity layer everything else depends on: - Keeping over a million collars connected across LoRa, cellular, and satellite direct-to-device - in valleys, over ridgelines, and far beyond the edge of conventional coverage. - Planning coverage with real RF engineering: link budgets, path loss modelling, antenna selection, and spectrum strategy across multiple regulatory regimes. - Running a fleet of thousands of remote towers with zero-touch provisioning, configuration automation, and remote diagnostics - a truck roll to a hill-country site is expensive, so software has to do the work. - Squeezing every byte: our devices are power and bandwidth constrained, so protocol efficiency and data optimisation directly shape the product. - Making network health visible - turning telemetry from millions of radio links into signals engineers and field teams can act on. Every team here ships systems that have to work in a paddock, not just a browser tab. As an engineering manager at Halter, you're in the work, not above it: coaching engineers, shaping the technical bets, and staying hands-on. WHAT YOU'LL DO - Lead a team of wireless network engineers - supporting their growth, giving great feedback, running performance conversations, and helping them focus on what matters. - Own the technical direction and delivery of the network: architecture, reliability, and scalability across collar-to-tower-to-cloud connectivity. - Stay close to the technical details - spectrum allocation and compliance, LoRa and cellular behaviour, tower infrastructure, fleet configuration automation, and the software tooling that ties it together - and bring a strong point of view. - Own network reliability outcomes: uptime, incident response, and the on-call practices that keep a 24/7 physical network healthy without burning the team out. - Drive tower deployment and coverage strategy as we scale into new regions - site selection, RF planning, and delivery of critical infrastructure. - Hire and grow the team. Wireless network engineering is a rare skill mix, and you'll be building a world-class bench of it. - Work closely with firmware, backend, hardware, and field operations to shape what we build, not just how. You'll be in the room when requirements are fuzzy and you'll help make them clear. - Back engineering-led initiatives and look for opportunities to use AI tools to accelerate development or unlock entirely new ways of working. - Get out on farm. Deep domain knowledge matters and you'll be expected to develop it. - Contribute to the broader engineering culture and practices that make Halter a great place to build. YOU'LL BE GREAT IF YOU - Have led engineers directly - performance conversations, mentoring, hiring, the lot. - Have strong wireless networking fundamentals - you're credible on spectrum allocation, path loss, link budgets, and antenna behaviour, and can hold a high technical bar with specialists in these areas. - Have hands-on experience with LoRa/L