About the role

Principal Software Engineer leading technical direction for Thanks’ advertising platform. Managing projects and mentoring engineers while ensuring high-quality production code is delivered.

Responsibilities

Set technical direction: Own architecture and system design decisions across the platform, with a focus on speed-to-learning. You will exercise the judgment to move fast on “Two-Way Door” decisions - prioritising modularity and refactorability - while applying deep architectural rigour and planning to the rare “One-Way Door” decisions that underpin our long-term scalability.
Lead complex, ambiguous initiatives: Break down hard problems, design solutions, and take them from idea to production in a fast-moving environment.
Raise the technical bar: Set contextual quality standards, system design, testing, performance, and developer experience - and lead by example.
Be hands-on where it matters most: Design and ship meaningful production code, particularly in high-leverage or high-risk areas of the system.
Partner deeply with Product and founders: Shape roadmaps, challenge assumptions, and help the business make smart technical trade-offs as we scale.
Develop engineers and culture: Mentor senior engineers, influence technical standards, and help build a high-trust, high-performance engineering culture.
Prepare us for scale: Improve observability, reliability, and operational practices as our traffic, revenue, and team grow.

Experience building and scaling production systems at significant scale, ideally in product-led, start-up or scale-up environments.
Deep expertise across TypeScript / Node.js / React, and strong system design fundamentals.
Proven ability to make good decisions under ambiguity and time pressures, balancing speed with long-term impact.
A track record of technical leadership through influence, not hierarchy.
Strong communication skills - able to explain complex ideas clearly and challenge constructively.
A genuine ownership mindset: you see problems, take responsibility, and drive them through to outcomes.
Humility and pragmatism - you care about building great systems and great teams.
This role is well-suited to senior Staff Engineers who are operating at, or ready to step into, Principal-level scope and impact.

Foundational impact: You won’t be joining a mature system to optimise at the margins. You’ll help define the technical foundations, standards, and direction that the company builds on for years to come.
Real ownership and trust: We hire experienced people and give them real authority. You’ll have the autonomy to make meaningful technical decisions, challenge assumptions, and help shape what “great” looks like at Thanks.
Attractive compensation: Including meaningful equity.
Growth, without chaos: You’ll work closely with our founders and Head of Product in a culture that values courage over comfort, high standards without ego, and kindness without complacency.
Flexibility with intent: We’re Sydney-headquartered and value in-person collaboration, ideally a couple of days per week. That said, we care more about leadership, impact, and outcomes than rigid rules - and we’re open to exceptional candidates across Australia’s east coast.