Senior Full Stack Developer

Swoopa; City of Melbourne; On-site; AUD 120,000 - 160,000; Full time

Job summary

Swoopa, located in Melbourne, Australia, is seeking a hands-on Technical Lead to drive the growth of a profitable SaaS business. This role emphasizes engineering ownership with responsibilities in leading technical direction, shipping features using AI technologies, and improving the overall performance of the engineering team.

The ideal candidate will possess extensive experience in Django and PostgreSQL, along with strong debugging skills, and must actively use AI in their daily workflow. Ownership, speed, and technical excellence are key values for this position.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience with Django development.
• 5+ years of PostgreSQL database experience.
• Strong experience in debugging production systems.
• Proven track record of using AI-assisted development.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical direction and conduct code reviews.
• Ship production-ready features using AI development tools.
• Resolve production issues and improve engineering performance.
• Own release quality and ensure system reliability.

Skills

Django

PostgreSQL

React Native

AWS

Kubernetes

Docker

Celery

Job description

Technical Lead / AI-Native Founding Engineer

We're looking for a hands‑on Technical Lead to help scale a profitable SaaS business serving vehicle dealers across the US.

This is not a management role. We want someone who can own engineering outcomes, ship quickly, solve difficult technical problems, and improve the performance of the entire engineering team.

Candidates must possess valid Australian work rights or visa authorisation.

You will:

• Lead technical direction and code reviews
• Ship production‑ready features using AI‑assisted development
• Diagnose and resolve production issues
• Improve development velocity and engineering standards
• Take ownership of release quality and system reliability

Our stack

• Django
• PostgreSQL
• React Native (Experience with React Native is required for this role)
• AWS (AWS cloud platform experience is required for this position)
• Kubernetes
• Docker (experience with willingness to learn Kubernetes is sufficient for this role)
• Celery

You should have:

• Deep Django and PostgreSQL expertise
• Minimum 5+ years of Django development experience
• Minimum 5+ years of PostgreSQL database experience
• Strong experience debugging production systems
• Experience scaling web applications and APIs
• A proven AI‑assisted development workflow (Cursor, Claude Code, ChatGPT, etc.)
• Daily AI‑assisted development workflow usage for at least 6+ months
• A track record of shipping quickly without sacrificing quality

This role is NOT for:

• Pure engineering managers
• Developers who need detailed specifications for every task
• Candidates who are not actively using AI in their daily workflow
• Developers who have never owned production systems

We value ownership, speed, technical excellence, and the ability to turn ideas into working products quickly.

If you're the type of engineer who can take a problem, figure it out, build it, ship it, and own the outcome, we'd like to hear from you.