Staff Software Engineer

About REA Group

REA Group is transforming how people experience property journeys, offering support from home searches to financing solutions. They foster a culture grounded in high performance and care, earning recognition as a top workplace in Australia for consecutive years and as a great place for women.

Team and Role Context

The Staff Software Engineer position is part of the AdTech team within the New Homes & Audience Solutions business unit of the Audience Solutions and Content tribe. This tribe links consumers with relevant property journey products such as finance, utilities, automotive services, and innovative advertising tools. The AdTech team builds and maintains the core technology behind REA's portal advertising products, delivering targeted ads at scale across web and app platforms. The group operates collaboratively with Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Finance, and Legal teams.

Key Role Functions

• Lead the architectural design and technical strategy for REA's advertising technology ecosystem, applying strong engineering principles and strategic insight within a complex domain.
• Drive technical exploration alongside Engineers, Product Owners, Sales, Ad Operations, and AdTech specialists by testing ideas, validating through experiments, and defining built solutions.
• Develop robust backend code including APIs, data pipelines, and event-driven systems, with flexibility to contribute across full stack development.
• Conduct in-depth research and rapid prototyping to assess solution feasibility and guide the team through uncertainties confidently.
• Collaborate closely with the Engineering Manager to tackle complex problems, influence technical decisions, and elevate team skill levels.
• Mentor engineers and AdTech specialists by pairing, code reviews, and direct guidance to cultivate technical excellence and ongoing learning.
• Stay current with AdTech industry advancements and broader engineering trends, fostering positive team culture, morale, and recruitment efforts.

Supporting the Team

• Write, test, and document code adhering to REA engineering standards and best practices.
• Lead or substantially contribute to strategic AdTech projects involving ad serving, programmatic infrastructure, identity management, and audience platforms.
• Solve complex technical challenges transparently, enabling others to expand their expertise, with ownership of demanding performance, integration, and architecture issues.
• Mentor through code reviews, pair programming, and direct coaching to encourage a culture of quality and continuous improvement.
• Assist the Engineering Manager in defining technical direction, engineering practices, and enhancing team capabilities.
• Connect with engineers organization-wide to align architecture decisions with overall technology strategy and contribute to engineering communities and standards.
• Design high-quality, balanced solutions while maintaining current products and participating in on-call production support duties.

Candidate Profile

• Possesses over 10 years of professional software engineering experience, especially with complex, high-scale systems.
• Experience within AdTech, digital advertising, or media technology domains is greatly valued but not mandatory.
• Expertise in API development (REST and GraphQL), distributed event-driven architectures, and cloud platforms such as AWS or GCP, with proven capability in building and operating scalable, reliable production systems.
• Proficiency in modern software engineering practices, including test-driven development (TDD), microservices architectures, and continuous delivery, paired with strong backend and full stack development skills.
• Advanced knowledge in designing and architecting high-performance systems at scale, working with relational and NoSQL databases, BigQuery, message queues, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Strong commitment to the "you build it, you run it" philosophy, responsible for service ownership from conception to production and experienced in managing critical operational incidents.
• Exceptional communication skills to convey technical strategies effectively to technical peers and non-technical stakeholders.
• Leadership and mentoring passion to nurture talent and develop inclusive, high-achieving teams with high standards for quality, testing, observability, and monitoring.

Additional Information

The role is permanently based in Melbourne or Sydney with a hybrid and flexible working model. Benefits include flexible leave options like birthday leave and additional leave purchase, inclusive parental leave provisions, community volunteering and charitable programs, and opportunities to innovate through hackdays.

REA Group values diversity, equity, and inclusion, encouraging applicants with the requisite skills and enthusiasm even if they do not meet every job requirement. There is also a Talent Neighbourhood for ongoing engagement with potential candidates.