Staff Software Engineer

Auror; United States; Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 175,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary range

Annual bonus

Employee share scheme

Flexibility

Shorter work weeks (Fridays off)

Health and well-being focus

Parental leave

Job summary

Auror is seeking a Staff Software Engineer for its ASR product to turn complex recognition signals into reliable experiences for safer stores. You will shape technical direction, collaborate with Product and Design, and drive production-ready solutions across edge and cloud deployments.

You will join a team focused on scalable, secure, and observable systems, mentored by senior leaders, and enabled to mentor others while delivering real-world value to major retailers in the US and UK.

Qualifications

• You’ve demonstrated Staff-level impact driving technical outcomes and guiding a team.
• You’ve developed products through uncertainty, testing assumptions with customers.
• You combine technical depth with hands-on delivery across architecture and production code.
• You can reason about service boundaries, event flows and failure modes.
• You coach engineers to improve practices and enable independent work.

Responsibilities

• Shape technical direction as the product evolves and explain options and tradeoffs.
• Work with Product and Design to validate value and gather customer feedback.
• Lead complex work from planning to production with hands-on involvement.
• Prepare ASR for enterprise scale across edge and cloud systems.
• Strengthen team practices with clear decisions and shared learning.

Skills

Staff-level impact

Experience with uncertainty

Hands-on delivery

System design

Mentoring engineers

Tools

Distributed cloud services

Observability

Incident learning

Job description

About Auror

At Auror, we’re empowering the retail industry to tackle theft and Organised Retail Crime, a $150 Billion problem globally. It’s high volume crime that’s increasingly organised in nature and is putting people, retailers, and communities at risk every day.

Founded in New Zealand 13 years ago, we’re working with some of the best and largest retailers in the world across the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK.

Auror is connecting people and intelligence to reduce crime. We’re using technology for good.

In partnership with our leading retail partners, we need people with the passion, determination, and innovation required to overcome one of the world’s largest problems. If you’re looking to make a difference with and for the people dedicated to stopping crime, for good, then we want you on our team.

We’re also embracing the potential of AI to supercharge our impact—whether that’s enhancing the way we detect trends, support our customers, or improve internal workflows. As a company, we’re committed to responsibly incorporating AI into how we work and what we build, and we encourage all Aurors to be curious about how AI can elevate their work, regardless of role or function.

The Role

Build technology that helps retail teams recognise risk and respond when it matters. As a Staff Software Engineer in Auror Subject Recognition (ASR), you’ll help turn complex recognition signals into reliable, useful experiences that support safer stores.

Our ASR product is evolving quickly, with opportunities to shape the product, solve complex technical challenges and deliver meaningful outcomes for customers, with significant opportunities ahead in the UK and US. You’ll help us learn what customers need, improve the experience across enrolment, detections and real‑time alerts, and prepare the product for large enterprise deployments. The challenge spans in-store edge systems and cloud services, with privacy and trust built into technical decisions.

You’ll be on the tools and help be the technical voice in the team. Working alongside Product, Design and engineering peers, you’ll turn ambiguous problems into clear approaches, make deliberate tradeoffs and adjust direction as we learn. You’ll also help the team make better decisions, building the capability and ways of working needed to scale alongside the product.

Practically this will involve:

• Shape technical direction as the product evolves. Turn uncertain requirements into clear technical approaches, explaining the options, tradeoffs and rationale. Balance immediate customer needs with architecture that can grow with ASR.

• Stay close to customers and validate value early. Partner with Product and Design to test assumptions, understand real workflows and improve enrolment, detections and alerts for large UK and US customers.

• Lead complex work through to production. Break open-ended problems into achievable increments, staying hands‑on with design and implementation. Adapt scope and priorities as customer feedback and the roadmap evolve.

• Prepare ASR for enterprise scale. Anticipate bottlenecks across edge and cloud systems, improve observability and resilience, and ensure the team can investigate production incidents effectively. Build security and privacy into the approach from the start.

• Strengthen how the team works. Coach engineers on system design, scoping and technical judgement. Use approach reviews, clear written decisions and shared learning to improve delivery and help others work independently.

You’ll be reporting to Richard Brookes, Senior Engineering Lead

I’ve spent 25 years in engineering, starting out at IBM in the UK before moving to New Zealand 20 years ago. Since then I’ve worked across companies of every size, from early‑stage SaaS start‑ups to global organisations. For the last six years I’ve been leading engineering teams, and I’ve found that helping people grow is just as rewarding as building the systems themselves.

I recently joined Auror to lead our team working on subject recognition. It’s a fascinating problem space with hard engineering challenges and real‑world impact. Auror is also at an exciting stage: big enough to be solving problems at global scale, and still early enough that the team has a real hand in shaping how we build. I lead in a way that’s open, honest and trusting. I share context early, give clear and candid feedback, and trust people to own their work, because that’s how teams do their best work and enjoy doing it.

Outside of work, I live rurally in Northland with my wife and our two teenage sons. Whenever I get the chance, I’m out on the water, whether that’s SCUBA diving, boating or kayaking.

About you

• You’ve demonstrated Staff‑level impact. You’ve been driving technical outcomes, solved complex problems and helped a team make and execute sound technical decisions. You don’t need to have held the Staff title already.

• You have experience developing products through uncertainty. You’ve worked on an early‑stage or evolving product, tested assumptions with customers and adapted technical choices as you learned what delivered value.

• You combine technical depth with hands‑on delivery. You can reason about architecture, service boundaries, event flows and failure modes, then turn that thinking into maintainable production software.

• You make deliberate, pragmatic tradeoffs. You can explain what matters now, what can wait and why. You’re comfortable changing plans when new evidence emerges while keeping the team focused on meaningful outcomes.

• You help others become more effective. You build trust, invite constructive challenge and communicate clearly. You coach engineers and improve practices so the team can move forward without depending on you for every decision.

• You care about operating what you build. You have experience anticipating scaling limits and using testing, observability and incident learning to improve reliability. Experience with distributed cloud services, edge deployments or sensitive‑data systems would be valuable.

• We are looking for people who demonstrate a strong alignment to our Guiding Principles (you can find these on our Careers page).

Auror is committed to providing an inclusive and accessible application process to all candidates and we are actively working to improve diversity within the tech industry. We celebrate diversity and inclusiveness at Auror, regardless of (but not limited to) race, gender, sexual orientation, family status, religion, ethnicity, national origin, physical disability, veteran status, or age.

If you need adjustments to any part of our recruitment process because of accessibility reasons, please do not hesitate to let us know during the application process. We will work with you to identify adjustments that will allow you to perform at your best.

What are the benefits like?

• Competitive salary range: Depending on level of experience a starting salary of $150,000 - 175,000 (IC4)

• Annual bonus: Eligibility for a NZD $5,500 bonus at the end of the financial year if we’ve hit our revenue goals together.

• Employee share scheme: You’ll own part of a company making a real difference!

• Flexibility: We are hard‑working and outcome focused, but recognise there is more to life than work. We promote a healthy work/life blend.

• Shorter work weeks (at full pay): Everyone gets Friday afternoons off, so you can start your weekend early, and do more of whatever it is that makes you happy.

• Focus on mental and physical health: We understand how vital our health is and have policies to support your wellness, including Wellness Days, and up to $750 NZD for expert sessions every year.

• Health Care Plan: We prioritise looking after your health by offering cover under our premier health business insurance plan through nib health insurance - with Auror covering 100% of your premium.

• Family‑friendly: We offer comprehensive paid parental leave - 12 weeks for birth parents and 6 weeks for non‑birth parents following birth, adoption, or surrogacy, available to all Aurors from day one.

• Personal growth: We support our team to participate in courses, conferences, or events that will help them develop their skills.

• Team love: We have regular team lunches and social events where most (if not all) activities are during work hours.