Investment Manager

About Airtree

Airtree is the reference investor for the iconic technology companies emerging from Australia and New Zealand. Our venture and growth portfolios comprise 130+ startups and include 9 of the top 10 most valuable private technology companies in the region — Canva, Airwallex, Employment Hero, Linktree, Go1, Eucalyptus, SafetyCulture, Immutable and many more.

We manage over $2bn across five fund vintages. About two-thirds of our most recent $650m raise came from tier-one global institutional investors — many backing Australian venture for the first time.

We are committed to building a world-class VC platform for Australia and New Zealand startups with global ambitions. This is an opportunity to help shape Airtree and make an impact on our region's tech ecosystem.

The Opportunity

We're hiring an Investment Manager to find and win the best early stage companies being built by ANZ founders.

We want someone who ships their own tools, reads the research, understands what's real and what's hype, and can sit across the table from a technical founder and earn their respect. This is a mid-level role. You do not need to have been an investor before but we are looking for some commercial experience or instincts.

You're a high-agency relationship builder at the core - someone who loves thinking about different markets and business models and where the next decacorn could come from. Once up and running you will lead deals end-to-end, contribute to Airtree's internal AI tooling, and help the team develop sharper frameworks for evaluating what's emerging from the labs.

You will be part of our investment team of 13.

The Role

Source and win early stage investments

• Build a sourcing engine for early stage companies across ANZ and selectively globally. That means developing real relationships in the AI community: researchers, builders, operators, open-source contributors. We have processes in place and a high performing team to learn how to do this effectively.
• Be the first call for founders building in AI. Get involved in the community by showing up at the right events, contribute to the discourse, and earn trust before a round opens.

Run Investment Committee-quality diligence

• Evaluate technical defensibility: can this be replicated by a frontier model update? Is the data moat real? What does the competitive landscape actually look like?
• Assess founding teams with depth: their technical credibility, their commercial instinct, their ability to recruit. You will be learning how to do this from some of the best Investors in the region
• Write investment memos that are rigorous on the technology, honest about the risks, and clear on why now.

Help build Airtree's AI capability

• We're building AI-powered tools internally: for sourcing signals, company research, meeting preparation, and portfolio monitoring. You will contribute to this and have access to the best tools.

Support portfolio founders

• Be a useful sounding board for portfolio companies navigating AI adoption, integration, and strategy.
• Connect founders to relevant people in your network: talent, customers, co-investors, technical advisors.

Requirements

We're less interested in years of experience than in what you've actually done. The right person might come from VC, might come from building an AI company, might come from a research lab.

What matters:

• You have a proven interest in investing and the startup ecosystem.
• You're high agency. You don't wait to be told what to do. You see a gap, you fill it. You find the company before anyone's heard of it. You build the tool the team didn't know it needed.
• You can write a compelling investment memo. Clear thinking, honest risk assessment, a point of view on why a company will win. You don't need to have written one before, but have strong written communication.
• You care about founders. You understand that behind every deal is a person making the hardest decisions of their career, and you want to be genuinely useful to them.
• You build things. You've shipped products, tools, or prototypes using AI. You don't just talk about models — you use them, break them, and understand their limits from first-hand experience.
• You follow the research. You read papers, track what's coming out of the major labs, and can form a view on what's signal and what's noise. You know the difference between a novel architecture and a fine-tuned wrapper.
• You're deeply networked in AI. Or you have the instinct and energy to become so, fast. You can build trust with a PhD researcher as easily as with a commercial co-founder. You're comfortable in rooms where you're the least technical person and rooms where you're the most commercial one.

Nice to have (but not required):

• Prior venture capital or startup operating experience.
• A technical background: computer science, engineering, maths, or self-taught equivalent.
• Experience evaluating deep-tech or frontier-technology companies.
• An existing network in the ANZ or global AI community.
• A public body of work: writing, open-source contributions, talks, or products people can point to.

Benefits

Airtree's headquarters are based in Sydney, and this role will be based out of our Sydney HQ. Our team enjoys a flexible, supportive and family-friendly work environment.

We also offer:

• 5 weeks of leave: 4 weeks annual leave plus 1 bonus week of lifestyle and wellbeing leave.
• Hybrid work environment. 
• 16 weeks of paid parental leave, plus a flexible return to work program.
• An annual budget for your training & self-development.
• A range of health and wellness benefits including EAP, mental health first aid training, skin checks, flu vaccines and more.

Diversity & Inclusion

We celebrate and value diversity and are committed to being equitable and inclusive in the way we hire and work together.