Staff Developer

• Transform and lead with innovation as a Staff Developer and drive strategic projects within the Agency Marketplace tribe!
• Permanent role based in Richmond

We're REA
With bold and ambitious goals, REA Group  is changing the way the world experiences property. No matter where you're at on your property journey, we're here to help with every step - whether that's finding or financing your next home.
Our people are the key to our success. At the heart of everything we do, is a thriving culture centred around high performance and care. We are purpose driven and collaborative, which drives innovation and our ability to make a real impact. As such, we’re proud to have been named in Australia’s “Top 5” Best Workplaces two years in a row, as well as being recognised as a Best Workplace for Women.

Where the team fits in

The Staff Developer role sits within the Agency Marketplace tribe within our Customer group. The Agency Marketplace tribe has a mission to help customers grow their business. It builds and maintains a set of products that allow potential sellers to connect with the right agent, and for agents to find and cultivate the seller leads which are crucial to the success of their business. The tribe is unique in that it has a foot in both camps – we build products for both agents and the people who require their services.  

What the role is all about

As a Staff Developer you will be responsible for designing, implementing and maintaining our products in a collaborative team environment. You will have deep technical expertise to apply, to the systems your team is responsible for. You will also be expected to implement solutions using a variety of programming languages, databases and cloud technologies. You will follow agile software development practices such as test-driven development, continuous delivery and pair programming.  You will form a part of a cross-functional team and will make a positive contribution to the success of the team’s mission. You will lead or significantly contribute to medium to large-scale features and initiatives that have strategic impact for your group, and at times for REA. 

You will provide technical leadership within your team in line with your specializations. Through your deep technical skills and strong experience designing and developing complex applications and systems, you will coach and mentor other Developers and Senior Developers that you work closely with in your team. Your focus will be working on and leading initiatives that have strategic value while driving technical design decisions and leveling up the capability of your team. You will be expected to write a lot of well-designed code. You will be a key technical ally of the team’s Lead Developer and support them in designing and developing solutions for the complex and hard problems your team faces. As an individual contributor, you will be afforded the space to work directly “on the tools” whenever possible and contribute to the technology strategy of the tribe. 

You will be involved in discovery practices that help shape the products and initiatives that your team will deliver. 

You will continually grow your technical competency by being aware of developments in the technical community within and beyond REA and keep up to date on emerging trends and techniques. 

You will contribute positively to the culture of the team, build engagement and morale, be involved in recruiting, set structure and processes and generally help build and maintain a high performing team.  

• Writing, testing and documenting code according to REA Engineering standards and practices  
• Designing, coding, testing and deploying new software products using a variety of technologies and platforms.   
• Leading or significantly contributing to initiatives with strategic focus and value  
• Providing deep expertise and specialized knowledge in one or more core technical competencies  
• Solving deep, complex technical problems in ways that enable other team members to learn and extend  
• Supporting the Lead Developer and Technical Lead in setting the technical direction and practices and upskilling the team’s capabilities  
• Connect with developers across the tribe facing similar technical challenges to connect solution architecture with broader tech strategy  
• Working with stakeholders to design high quality solutions that meet the needs of our users.  
• Maintaining existing products, including bug fixes and “Business As Usual” feature enhancements.   
• Supporting production systems, including being part of the Day Pager Escalation roster  
• Providing technical mentoring and guidance to all members of the team  
• Reviewing and giving feedback on PRs and engineering docs   

Who we’re looking for

• You will likely have 8+ years of experience working in software development and 5+ years as a recognised expert in your technical specialisation  
• Experience building reliable, scalable, complex software applications  
• Developed skills in modern software development techniques such as functional programming, test driven development, micro-services, and continuous delivery.  
• An appetite to work on both front-end and back-end systems  
• Hands on experience of software design patterns and best practices  
• An understanding of common web and application architectures  
• Open to learning other languages and frameworks that support our technical direction   
• Understanding of software infrastructure, deployment practices and CI/CD  
• Great people skills and a good communicator  
• Looks at tricky situations through a solutions-focused lens   
• Work productively in a fast paced and agile environment  
• You've probably written and published white papers specific to your specialty, and maybe even contributed to open source projects.  
• You’ve been through critical, operational situations and supported the resolution of high-impact issues.  
• Tertiary qualification in Computer Science or similar highly desirable.  
• You’ve actively worked with and supported systems in AWS, Docker, GCP or Azure  
• Advanced skills in designing solutions that scale and perform for millions of users.  
• Advanced skills in developing long-term system architecture strategies.   
• Advanced skills in two or more of our programming languages – Scala, Java, Ruby, TypeScript, JavaScript; and functional programming. 
• Advanced skills in use of message queues and modern databases (Pg, Elasticsearch, Big Query).  
• Deep understanding of API development with hands-on experience developing in GraphQL, REST, API Gateways, Load Balancers, CDN, WAF and security patterns.   
• Expert skills in modern software development techniques such as test-driven development, micro-services and continuous delivery.  
• Expert skills in distributed event-driven systems architectures and cloud providers’ offerings (AWS/GCP).  
• Deep understanding in modern software development techniques such as test-driven development, micro-services and continuous delivery.

The REA experience

The physical, mental, emotional and financial health of our people is something we’ll never stop caring about. This is a place to learn and grow.

Some of our Perks & Benefits include: 

• A hybrid and flexible approach to working
• Flexible leave options including, birthday leave and purchase additional leave
• Flexible parental leave offering for primary and secondary carers
• Our Because We Care program offers employees volunteering leave, community grants, matched payroll giving and our Community Café donates 100% of revenue to charity
• Hackdays so you can bring your big ideas to life  

Our commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion  

We are committed to providing a working environment that embraces and values diversity, equity and inclusion. We believe teams with diverse ideas and experiences are more creative, more effective and fuel disruptive thinking. If you've got the skills, dedication and enthusiasm to learn but don't necessarily meet every single point on the job description, please still get in touch.

Join our Talent Neighbourhood

Keen to be part of REA but didn't find a perfect match with this opportunity? Perhaps the timing isn't right? You should join our Talent Neighbourhood!

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