From intern to Engineering Manager: How Rebekah Chow carved out a high-impact tech career at Nine

Embracing the unexpected path from intern to leader

Rebekah’s journey at Nine began through the UNSW Co-Op internship program. After completing her placement, she stayed on as an Associate Software Engineer while finishing her degree, stepping straight into a full-time software engineering role upon graduation.

While leadership wasn’t initially on her radar, a major migration project in 2022 changed everything. Tasked with leading the technical feature release to bring the Traveller website under the main masthead domains, Rebekah got her first taste of cross-functional coordination.

“For the first time, my day-to-day went beyond writing code,” Rebekah recalls. “I was managing moving parts, working closely with stakeholders, and rallying a team toward a shared goal. I realised I absolutely loved that side of the work.”

When a short-term, three-month acting Engineering Manager position opened up in mid-2023, Rebekah threw her hat in the ring, despite feeling underqualified. It was a leap of faith that paid off. Nine chose to invest in her potential, and that temporary stint quickly evolved into a permanent leadership role. Since taking the reins, she has guided her team through massive milestones, from executing complex codebase migrations to expanding Nine’s popular digital puzzles lineup with Target Time and Mini Crosswords.

Holding the keys to platforms that shape national conversations

For Rebekah, the draw to Nine was always about impact. There are few places in the Australian tech landscape where your code is instantly interacted with by millions of citizens.

The gravity of that responsibility became clear early in her career during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Only a month into her part-time role as a graduate, the world went into lockdown.

“Amidst the uncertainty, I was given the responsibility of building our very first piece of pandemic content: a strap at the top of the homepage highlighting our daily live coverage,” she says. “As the crisis evolved, our team worked at lightning speed, continuously shipping dedicated content hubs and data widgets under tight deadlines to keep the public informed. It’s one of my proudest moments at Nine as it proved just how much our engineering work matters to people’s daily lives.”

That same sense of massive scale was on display during the Paris Olympics. As the official broadcaster, Nine required an unprecedented, cross-functional engineering effort. It was Rebekah’s first major project as a permanent Engineering Manager, requiring seamless collaboration across multiple digital teams to deliver consistent, high-traffic coverage across all masthead brands.

Transitioning from code to culture with Nine’s support

Moving from the objective logic of coding to the human-centric world of people management can be a daunting leap for any engineer. Rebekah credits Nine’s deliberate support structures for making her transition a success.

Initially, she was paired with a seasoned co-manager in a uniquely structured dual-EM role, providing her with a built-in mentor for real-time feedback and advice.

Beyond team-level mentorship, Rebekah went through Nine’s training program, Leading at Nine, designed to give leaders a practical toolkit for people management. This is supplemented by casual, monthly internal sessions where leaders across the business meet to discuss management frameworks and strategies.

“While nothing beats first-hand experience, having these frameworks really ensures you don’t feel like you’re being thrown straight into the deep end,” she notes.

Staying technically sharp with JEDI time

While her day-to-day focus is now strategic, Rebekah remains an engineer at heart. To balance her leadership duties with her love for programming, she relies on code reviews and a beloved fortnightly team ritual.

Every second Friday, after a sprint closes, her team participates in Just Effing Do It (JEDI) time.

“The team is given total freedom to work on whatever they want, whether that’s squashing a nagging bug, refactoring clunky code, innovating new solutions, or knocking out tasks that never quite make it into a standard sprint,” Rebekah explains. “I almost always use this as a chance to get hands on with the code again. It perfectly scratches that coding itch.”

Paying it forward and championing diversity in STEM

As a successful woman leading an engineering team in a traditionally male-dominated field, Rebekah is passionate about creating pathways for the next generation. She regularly represents Nine at university campus career expos and office site visits, ensuring new interns and grads always have a supportive ally in leadership.

“I love that I get to collaborate with such a diverse group of people across our teams. As a woman in a traditionally male-dominated field”

When it comes to corporate culture, Rebekah highlights Nine’s genuine commitment to inclusivity, particularly through groups like WIT+ (Women in Tech +).

“I feel incredibly fortunate that I’ve never been made to feel like a minority or treated any differently to my peers, I think it’s a true testament to Nine’s commitment to ensuring there are equal opportunities for everyone.” she says. “Within Digital, our WIT+ group is a massive driver of this, constantly raising awareness and creating a space where everyone feels they belong through initiatives like community-sharing events and mentoring.”

The ultimate pitch: Why ambitious engineers should choose Nine

For tech professionals looking from the outside in, Rebekah believes Nine offers the absolute sweet spot of the engineering world: the nimbleness of small teams combined with the immense scale of Australia’s largest media company.

“Digital is made up of small-to-medium sized teams, each owning massive, high-impact platforms,” she says. “While my team handles the website for the Metro Mastheads, there are also individual teams that look after the Australian Financial Review website, nine.com.au, 9Now, Stan, and each of their respective apps.”

The beauty of this architecture is the unparalleled internal opportunities  it offers.

“The room for growth at Nine is massive. An engineer could start in Publishing working on a web team, pivot to working on our award-winning CMS, and then move over to Streaming working on 9Now. You can essentially build a handful of entirely different careers here without ever having to leave the business!”