Staff Software Engineer

About the Company

This is a rare greenfield opportunity: a chance to be the technical driving force behind a brand-new consumer app, powered by one of the richest food and drink datasets in the market, where machine learning isn't a nice-to-have, it's the product. Our client is a well-established Australian hospitality tech company with deep roots in the industry and an enormous proprietary dataset built over years of powering venues across the country. They're now launching a new product, a consumer-facing app.

About the Role

You'll join as a Staff (or Senior Staff) Software Engineer with ML Expertise, working end-to-end: designing and shipping recommendation systems, embedding-based search, and intelligent personalisation that feels genuinely useful, not surveillance-y. You'll collaborate directly with the company's co-founder (who serves as Product Manager), shaping both the technical direction and the product experience.

Responsibilities

• Own ML solution design. Design and build ML-powered features from scratch, recommendation engines, collaborative filtering, embedding-based search, ensuring every technology choice serves the long-term product vision.
• Build the data infrastructure. Architect and implement event-driven, anti-fragile data pipelines feeding into and out of ML models, built on Infrastructure as Code.
• Deliver high-leverage production code. Write production-quality code end-to-end, owning delivery of features from concept to live, not just the ML layer, but the full stack where needed.
• Champion engineering standards. Set the bar for engineering quality on the team: code reviews, non-functional requirements (security, observability, testing), and sustainable practices.
• Lead initiatives end-to-end. Take independent ownership of technical initiatives, plan, execute, and ship cross-functional projects without needing to be managed.
• Mentor and multiply the team. Help the engineers around you level up, in ML capability, solution design, and engineering craft, through mentorship and hands-on collaboration.

Qualifications

• Core ML & Data (essential)
• Production experience with machine learning, generative AI, and big data, particularly recommendations, collaborative filtering, and embedding-based search.
• Proven track record building and maintaining anti-fragile, event-driven data pipelines in production using Infrastructure as Code.
• Commercial experience in DataOps and/or MLOps.

Required Skills

• Systems & Architecture (essential)
• Experience with scalable, modularised distributed systems, Event-Driven Architecture and Domain-Driven Design are a must.
• Technical Skills
• Strong software engineering across modern languages, TypeScript/Node.js is a strong advantage, alongside Python, JavaScript, Go, or Ruby.
• Comfortable with front-end technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript); React experience is a plus.
• Cloud platform experience (AWS, GCP, or Azure) and solid observability fundamentals, logging, monitoring, alerting.

Preferred Skills

• People & Communication
• Strong coaching instincts and the ability to communicate clearly with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Bonus Points
• Experience building consumer-facing personalisation products.
• Background in personalising digital ordering experiences.
• Familiarity with the hospitality or food & beverage industry.
• Strengths in modern front-end architecture or consumer-facing hybrid app development.

Pay range and compensation package

In Your First Six Weeks, You Might Have…

• Designed and deployed a recommendation system, using collaborative filtering and embedding-based search, that personalises venue discovery based on each user's taste profile.
• Built and launched ML models for structured data extraction (menus, cuisines) from raw datasets, making the product smarter from day one.

Equal Opportunity Statement

Our client is committed to diversity and inclusivity in the workplace.