Senior Software Engineer

Squiz; Sydney; Hybrid; AUD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Squiz in Sydney, Australia, is seeking a Senior Software Engineer for the Discovery domain. You will build resilient cloud services in Node.js and TypeScript on AWS, focusing on security, cost efficiency, and scalable AI-enabled features.

You will work with a Tech Lead and Engineering Manager on high-impact backend work, shaping our next-generation conversational platform in a flexible, hybrid environment on the east coast of Australia.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of hands-on experience building, scaling, and maintaining complex distributed systems in production.
• Deep production experience with cloud-native AWS environments (serverless, containers, IaC).
• Proven ability in DevSecOps, including CI/CD automation and AWS Well-Architected.

Responsibilities

• Take ownership of core services within the Discovery team, ensuring scalable, highly available pipelines.
• Design and implement resilient distributed systems with event-driven architectures.
• Embed DevSecOps practices with automated security scanning and IAM controls.
• Maintain and optimize CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure reproducibility.
• Contribute to Generative AI and RAG architectures and cost-controlled deployments.
• Write clean backend services using Node.js and TypeScript on AWS.
• Mentor peers and participate in architectural discussions.

Skills

Distributed systems

Node.js

TypeScript

AWS serverless

DevSecOps

Cloud architecture

Tools

AWS CDK

Terraform

CI/CD automation

OpenSearch/Elasticsearch

Job description

At Squiz, we are building a cloud-based Digital Experience Platform (DXP) designed to power complex content management, optimization tooling, and platform services. Within this ecosystem, our Discovery team is fundamentally redefining how enterprise customers interact with data. We are moving past traditional keyword matching to build next-generation Conversational Search and Content Intelligence products.

We are looking for a Senior Software Engineer to join our Discovery domain. This role requires a pragmatic, battle-tested software engineer. While you will contribute to our journey into generative AI and conversational capabilities, your primary responsibility is building resilient, secure, and cost-efficient cloud systems that make those capabilities possible. We need a systems thinker who values engineering rigor, robust architecture, and operational excellence just as much as cutting-edge technology.

The Team Dynamics

We believe senior engineers do their best work when given real technical autonomy, deep ownership over system architecture, and space to focus on the craft of software engineering. In this role, you will work in tight lockstep with a dedicated Tech Lead and Engineering Manager, driving high-impact backend services and shaping our next-generation conversational platform. You’ll be surrounded by collaborative, high-performing peers, solve complex distributed systems challenges at scale, and directly influence how enterprise customers interact with AI, all within a high-trust, flexible environment that balances rapid product delivery with sound architectural rigor.

This is a permanent position open to anyone living on the east coast of Australia. We operate on a flexible, hybrid model, meaning you can balance working from home and collaborating with the team in a way that actually works for you.

What the Work Looks Like Day-to-Day

• Take ownership of core services within the Discovery team, ensuring our conversational search and content intelligence pipelines are scalable, highly available, and structurally sound.
• Design and implement resilient, decoupled distributed systems using event-driven architectures, maintaining clean API boundaries and robust fault tolerance.
• Embed DevSecOps practices within the team, integrating automated security scanning, vulnerability management, and strict IAM principles into everything we build.
• Maintain and optimize CI/CD pipelines, driving automated testing, reliable deployment strategies (like blue-green or canary releases), and infrastructure reproducibility.
• Participate in FinOps practices for our domain, monitoring and optimizing AWS infrastructure spend across compute (ECS/Fargate/Lambda), storage (S3), search indexes, and LLM usage.
• Contribute to Generative AI and RAG architectures, helping evaluate and integrate tools like AWS Bedrock safely, cost-effectively, and pragmatically.
• Partner closely with the Tech Lead and Engineering Manager to balance delivering new product capabilities with maintaining long-term architectural health and reducing technical debt.
• Collaborate with business stakeholders and Designers to deconstruct technical requirements, define system boundaries, write clear user stories, and provide accurate estimates.
• Stay hands-on by writing clean, resilient backend services using Node.js and TypeScript on AWS.
• Provide supportive technical mentorship, participate in architectural discussions, and conduct thorough code reviews for peers across the team.

What We Are Looking For

• A solid foundation of 5+ years of hands-on experience building, scaling, and maintaining complex distributed systems in production.
• Deep production experience with cloud-native AWS environments, specifically serverless architectures (Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB), containerized workloads (ECS/Fargate), and Infrastructure as Code using AWS CDK or Terraform.
• Proven capability in modern DevSecOps practices, including building and maintaining robust CI/CD automation pipelines and implementing the AWS Well-Architected Framework.
• A strong track record of rigorous system design, with a deep understanding of caching strategies, database optimization, web performance tuning, and distributed debugging.
• The technical maturity to evaluate, architect, and safely implement Generative AI workflows (such as RAG and orchestration via AWS Bedrock) without losing sight of cost control and data security.
• Advanced programming skills in Node.js and TypeScript.
• Comfort working in iterative, agile engineering environments that leverage Scrum or Kanban frameworks.

Tools and Context That Will Help You Stand Out

If you have a strong background in enterprise search engines (like Elasticsearch or OpenSearch) or data engineering pipelines, you'll have a massive head start here. In particular, hands-on experience building and deploying production-grade LLM/AI-based services, especially using AWS Bedrock, will put you way ahead of the pack. While this is a heavily backend-focused infrastructure role, a passing literacy in React/JS/CSS helps keep frontend integrations smooth. Experience with modern cloud observability and monitoring tools (like Dynatrace, DataDog, or AWS CloudWatch) will also make you feel right at home.

About Squiz

Our mission is to empower organisations to create exceptional digital experiences that engage users, drive growth and build deeper relationships. Our long-term ambition is to redefine the digital experience landscape and become the platform of choice for enterprises pursuing customer-first digital transformation.

You’ll join a company that’s evolving quickly, investing heavily in modern AI-powered products, and competing in a space that’s becoming increasingly important.

You’ll work with some of the most intelligent and down to earth people you’ll ever meet: we are made up of a diverse range of passionate people who love challenging the status quo. Every day is different, but what is constant is we enjoy what we do.