Staff Backend Engineer - Search
SafetyCulture · Sydney, Australia · 1mo ago
Why join us?
Mitti by SafetyCulture is a global tech company, just not the kind you're picturing. Our almost 1,000-person team builds tools that make work better for the three billion frontline workers who keep the world moving. We've got big tech scale, without the sign-off layers or corporate theatre. Every permanent team member gets equity, so when we grow, you do too. This next chapter is about scaling smart, powered by AI, a clear vision and real ownership.
Big tech impact, without the big tech ick.
What do Mitti Engineers do?
Our mission – and your opportunity — is to help solve the challenges faced in an increasingly distributed workforce. In short, to shape Engineering excellence, nurture emerging Engineering talent and build out an inclusive, high-performing interdisciplinary team.
As a Senior Software Engineer, you’ll be empowered to manage complex architectural decisions and drive change. You’ll own the delivery of practical solutions to solve real-world problems for customers, with the knowledge that what you build has an immediate positive impact.
You’ll face exciting technical challenges as we scale, and be an integral part of the engineering team. High-performing teams here own their services, and you’re trusted to build and run a system that serves millions of users while transforming it into a system that will serve tens of millions of users in the near future. We empower engineers to learn new skills and use technology to solve customer problems, including initiatives in IoT, machine learning, and event-driven architecture.
In this role you can expect to:
Own the architecture for search across our platform – combining lexical text search and semantic/vector search – and set the standards other teams build on.
Design, build and operate a large-scale system across front end and back end, in a stack of React, TypeScript, Golang, PostgreSQL and OpenSearch running on AWS.
Provide technical leadership guiding search architecture, execution, and cross-functional collaboration to deliver impactful outcomes.
Own search feature delivery end-to-end: breaking down requirements with stakeholders, partnering with Product and Design, supporting other engineers, and ensuring successful delivery.
Articulate effort-vs-impact trade-offs, including build-vs-buy decisions.
Keep search operable at scale, performance, observability, and cost as data volume grows.
Drive high-performance team outcomes by setting rigorous engineering standards, mentoring peers, and improving team practices for quality, velocity, and collaboration.
Promote a culture of review, feedback and continuous learning: improve others’ ability to deliver great work by mentoring, pairing, and setting high standards for design and code.
Work in a hybrid working environment, including at our HQ based in Surry Hills, Sydney.
Demonstrate Mitti values (Think Customer, Open Honest Always, Better as a Team, Be Bold Bring Action).
You may be a great fit for this role if you have some of the following:
Experience designing, building and operating large scale data-intensive applications. Experience with building search systems at scale is a plus.
Depth of knowledge in a backend programming language and associated frameworks (e.g. Golang, Node.js or similar), and a track record of building robust, maintainable services.
Proven experience designing, building and running SaaS or cloud services at scale, ideally in a microservice or service-oriented architecture.
A systems thinker who decomposes large problems into small ones and teaches less experienced engineers to do the same.
Ability to guide data architecture decisions across teams to establish patterns that enable safe, high-throughput system design at scale.
A strong track record leading complex, high-impact initiatives across multiple teams with clear customer and business outcomes.
Experience working in a technical leadership capacity – influencing architecture, quality and ways of working beyond your immediate team, without relying on formal authority.
Ability to articulate effort vs impact trade-offs and help teams and stakeholders make pragmatic decisions.
A high-leverage mindset: you measure your impact by how much you accelerate others, reduce complexity, and improve system-level outcomes, not by the volume of code you personally write.
Strong mentoring and coaching skills, with a history of raising the bar for engineering practices and helping others grow.
Behaviours aligned with high-trust, high-impact teams – focusing on what moves the needle, sharing thinking early and often, and avoiding perfectionism that slows meaningful progress.
More than a job
Equity with high growth potential, and a competitive salary
Flexible working arrangements
Access to professional and personal training and development opportunities
Hackathons, Workshops, Lunch & Learns
In-house Culinary Crew serving up daily breakfast, lunch and snacks
Barista coffee machine, craft beer on tap, boutique wines and a range of non-alcoholic beverages
Wellbeing initiatives such as EAP services and generous parental leave policy
Quarterly celebrations and team events
On-site gym, table tennis, board games, books library, and pet-friendly offices
We’re committed to building inclusive teams and cultivating a sense of belonging so our people can bring their whole authentic selves to work each day. We seek to make reasonable adjustments throughout our recruitment process to create an even playing field for all candidates. Thanks to the tireless efforts of the entire Mitti team we’ve built an incredible culture which has seen us recognised as a Best Place to Work in Australia , the US and the UK .
Even if you don't meet every requirement listed in the ad, please consider applying for this role. We prioritise inclusion and value individuals with potential over a checklist of qualifications. Don't rule yourself out, hit that apply button if this job resonates with you
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