Why Herry Wiputra joined Nexl

In July this year, Nexl brought on a new CPTO, Herry Wiputra, to lead the next chapter of our Product & Engineering function. Herry is a seasoned technology leader with extensive experience in building product and engineering cultures of empowerment and collaboration, most recently as the leader of the product and technology function at hipages (ASX:HPG). His broader experience spans some of Australia’s most successful tech companies including Campaign Monitor, REA Group, and Aconex.

He joined Nexl to help shape the next phase of our product and engineering teams, as we build the growth system modern law firms rely on.

Sixty days in, we sat down with Herry to talk about why he joined and where he's taking the team next. If Herry’s interview resonates with you, we’re looking for Senior Engineers to join his team in Sydney.

Why did you decide to join Nexl?

Nexl had just closed its Series B with Tidemark Capital and that told me a lot, before I'd even had my first conversation with Phil. The product has strong product-market fit, so this was an opportunity to scale a company that was performing well in market. I've done this journey before (I held the combined product and technology remit at hipages for five years prior), so I knew what it takes to give a growing company the leadership and systems to scale sustainably. Nexl gave me the chance to do it again, at an AI-first company with even more room to run, in a category (legal tech) that's still underserved by modern software.

What surprised you most about the engineering team in your first few weeks?

The thing that surprised me most was the energy the team had, the hustle and willingness to have a go that you don't always find at a company of our size and stage. I was also surprised, in close to thirty one-on-ones in my first few weeks, by the appetite for positive change and new ways of working. People weren't defending how things worked; they were telling me where they wanted more structure and shared standards as we kept scaling. It’s rare to walk into a company that knows it needs to grow and evolve to keep winning.

What moment are you most proud of since joining Nexl?

The moment I’m most proud of was defining Nexl’s product and engineering process. It happened at our first-ever P&E All Hands. We polled the room at the start, before we'd shared anything, and most people told us there was inconsistency in how we build product at Nexl. By the end of the same session, after we'd walked through the new production system and sprint cadence together, we asked again, and almost everyone said they were clear. Watching that shift happen live, off the back of a plan the team could see themselves in, is exactly why I do this work and reflects the team’s attitude to evolve to keep winning.

What kind of engineering culture are you building at Nexl?

One built on systems, not heroes, and backed by real investment in the people doing the work. When I arrived a lot of quality depended on a handful of people quietly saving the day. The people doing the saving knew it wasn't sustainable. My line to the team has been, "We go faster alone, but we go further together". Ownership sits with teams, not individuals. People bring their skills to make the team better, not to be the one everyone waits on. That only works if it's built on real psychological safety and direct feedback, the kind where a hard conversation happens the week it needs to.

How do you think about the balance between engineering autonomy and technical rigour?

The rigour is what makes the autonomy safe. We built a production system with two clear modes:

1. Build to learn, where speed and validation matter most
2. Build to earn, where quality takes over once we know something's worth investing in

Inside that, teams have autonomy. They pull work when they have capacity and they own their domain permanently rather than being reshuffled every quarter. The principle I keep repeating is "act on 70% of the information you wish you had", because being slow costs us more than being wrong. The rigour is a shared architecture review before anything big goes into delivery, and standards (like WIP limits and cycle-time targets) that are the same across every squad, so autonomy doesn't mean twelve different companies operating under one roof.

How have you approached building out technical leadership and shaping the team's skill mix?

The clearest example is our designers. They used to be told what to design, rather than being part of figuring out what to design. Now they're involved right from discovery, talking to customers, testing ideas with prototypes, and gathering real feedback before anything gets built. You can see the ownership and confidence that's grown out of that.

We're applying the same principle across the team. We promoted internally for our Head of Engineering, backing someone who'd already proven they were the best person for the job rather than going outside to find a name. We also invested in our Senior Engineers by promoting several to Tech Leads, giving them technical ownership of their squad and backing it with coaching, forums, and career recognition.

On the product side, we've hired a Product Ops Lead to build the operational backbone that product hasn't had, and the processes and rigour that let our PMs spend their time on strategy and customers rather than chasing process by hand. Alongside all of that, DevOps and security remain the clearest gaps still open in engineering, and AI capability is now a first-class hiring bar across the board. It's been a deliberate mix of backing people who've already proven they can lead and bringing in expertise where we didn't have it before.

Where do you see AI making the biggest difference in Nexl's product over the next 12 months?

The shift I’m most excited about is evolving our platform into an AI-native system of action. Nexl is in a strong position because we have proprietary relationship data within the platform and now we are building AI agents and agentic workflows on top of that data.

Internally, we’re changing how we build product so all engineers work entirely agentically. We believe we’re one of the leading companies in Australia using agentic coding, and the engineers who belong here are the ones who want to be at the forefront of that agentic shift by building AI workflows that get embedded directly into product development.

What are you most excited about the team tackling in the next 6–12 months?

Agentic AI is the big one, building toward a product that doesn't just show our customers information but takes action on their behalf and hands back something they can approve in seconds. Underneath that, I'm genuinely energised by the unglamorous foundation work: two-week sprints, real cycle-time metrics, and a delivery rhythm the whole team trusts.

What would you say to an engineer who's on the fence about joining a Series B legal tech company right now?

Series B is the sweet spot. The existential risk is behind us, but the interesting problems (the ones that actually shape a product and a career) are still ahead. You're not joining something chaotic, and you're not arriving too late to leave a mark. Legal tech is a category that's been underserved by modern software for a long time, which means the problems are real, and the competition for the best people solving them is thinner than you'd think. And at this stage, a senior engineer owns outcomes: architecture, direction, and how the team works. The fingerprints you leave in the next year will be on this product for a long time.

Finish this sentence: "The engineers who thrive here are the ones who ___."

• Treat AI as a teammate
• Own outcomes
• Stay close to the customer to know why their work matters
• Are curious to teach themselves the next tool before anyone has to ask

Ready to be part of our next chapter?

We're hiring across our engineering team in Sydney, including Senior Engineers. Successful candidates will get real ownership, a leadership team investing seriously in how it builds, and a category still open for the taking. View our open roles.