Senior Software Engineer

Respondent Inc.; Sydney; On-site; AUD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Respondent Inc. in Sydney is seeking a Senior Full Stack Engineer to join our in-office Sydney team.

You’ll work with product, design, and the broader engineering group to build products customers love and shape the next generation of our platform. You’ll own features end-to-end, design scalable back-end systems, craft intuitive front-end experiences, and drive technical decisions with a focus on speed, quality, and business impact.

Qualifications

• Experience across both front-end and back-end in a full stack role.
• Ability to ship features end-to-end with limited guidance.
• Strong collaboration and communication across product and design.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with Product, Design and Engineers to build customer-focused software.
• Design scalable back-end systems and intuitive front-end experiences.
• Drive technical decisions and promote best practices.
• Push AI-powered dev practices and performance improvements.

Skills

Full stack

Ownership

Collaboration

Builder mindset

Adaptability

Quick learner

Real impact

Modern tech & AI

Culture that cares

Tools

TypeScript

Node.js

React

AWS

MongoDB

Job description

We’re looking for a Senior Engineer who’s excited to build products that customers genuinely love. You won’t just be keeping things running - you’ll be building new features, solving customer problems, and helping to shape the next generation of our platform. If you thrive in fast-moving environments, love high ownership, and want to see your work in the hands of customers, this is the perfect place.

Respondent is building the infrastructure that powers participant recruiting for the research industry. Our mission is simple but ambitious: to make it effortless for researchers to find high-quality human participants - whether they’re testing a product, exploring a market, or validating an idea.

From our founder’s first recruits on a NYC subway to a global panel of 4 million participants across 150+ countries, we now support research for companies like Microsoft, Dropbox, and P&G. Our panel is one of the most diverse and responsive in the industry.

We’re a 35-person team across Sydney, Manila, and the US. We’re intentional about collaborating in person - serendipitous hallway conversations, whiteboarding sessions, and quick alignment cycles help us move faster and build something great together.

We’ve gone from 0 to 1, recently reaching profitability and intending to stay so. We’re scaling with intention and reinvesting in the business to grow our platform, panel, and team. Joining at this stage means your work will have a direct impact as we take Respondent from 1 to 10.

The role:

You’ll be joining our Sydney team as a Senior Full Stack Engineer, working closely with product, design, and the broader engineering team to build products our customers love. This is an in-office role, and we’re looking for someone who’s genuinely excited about collaborating in person.

You’ll work across the stack - from designing scalable back-end systems to creating intuitive front-end experiences that our customers love. You’ll play a key role in shaping how ideas become products, guiding technical decisions, and championing best practices that help us move quickly.

This role is perfect for an engineer who’s passionate about building great products, shipping quickly, thinking commercially and seeing the impact of their work firsthand.

What You’ll Do:

• Product Engineering: Work with Product, Design and other Engineers to build and improve software that delivers real value to our customers
• API Development: Build robust and secure APIs that facilitate communication between front-end and back-end systems or external services
• Work at the edge of AI: We’re actively using AI in our dev workflows and our product and you’ll help us push that further.
• Software Process Optimisation: Implement and refine software development processes and methodologies, enhancing efficiency and quality in front-end, back-end, and data engineering contexts.

What you’ll bring:

• Full stack expertise: You have strong experience across both front-end and back-end. Our stack includes TypeScript, Node.js, React, AWS and MongoDB - but we care more about your ability to learn and ship than a perfect tech match.
• High ownership: You take a feature from problem to shipped and keep it moving on your own - you share progress proactively, raise blockers early, and ask for help when you need. You define problems, run experiments, ship, measure, and iterate without heavy process.
• Collaboration and communication: You can work cross-functionally with Product and other functions, and you’re comfortable giving and receiving candid feedback to help the team build the best solution
• Builder’s mindset: You’ve delivered real products or features - whether at work, or something you put out there yourself. You care about building products that customers love, not just writing code.
• Adaptability: You are comfortable in a fast-paced and ambiguous environment, and can figure things out when the path isn’t fully defined.
• Quick learner: You have a growth mindset and can quickly learn new languages, tools and frameworks.
• Real impact: You’ll be part of a small, high-ownership engineering team where your work ships fast and directly shapes the experience for customers like Microsoft and Dropbox.
• Profitable and growing: We’re a 30-person startup that’s scaling - you’ll get the excitement of startup growth with the stability of proven traction.
• Modern tech and mindset: Work with the latest tools and AI-powered dev practices, giving you a front-row seat to cutting-edge engineering.
• Culture that cares: Be part of a tight-knit global team (Sydney, Manila, US). We’re collaborative, supportive, and believe in balancing high performance with a fun workplace.
• Solve real business problems: Work closely with our Product, Commercial and Design teams. You get to expand your Engineering knowledge to solve real business problems