Senior Product Engineer – Platform Learning

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in New Zealand.

📋 Description

• Deliver customer-centric products: Collaborate with the team to design, build, and launch research features that engage customers. Your platform expertise is valuable, but product delivery is central to this role.

• Enhance platform capabilities: Design and implement the infrastructure and automation that enable rapid deployment into scalable, observable, secure, and reliable systems.

• Be the go-to expert in challenging situations: Take the lead as the engineer the team relies on when faced with complex platform issues, from difficult scaling and reliability concerns to intricate deployments.

• Work across the entire stack: Contribute to projects utilizing Ruby on Rails and AWS, while also possessing enough frontend (React) knowledge to enhance the product.

• Advocate for reliability and security from the outset: Provide a strong operational and security viewpoint during product development, influencing the architecture and guiding the team toward practical practices.

• Engage with the Platform Guild: Act as the representative for the Innovation team in a cross-functional group of platform-focused engineers who monitor Optimal's overall platform requirements.

• Influence product strategy: Maintain close involvement with user needs and problem areas, actively guiding the product's trajectory through hands-on exploration.

• Foster cross-functional collaboration: Team up with designers, product managers, and AI engineers to prototype, validate, and refine innovative product concepts.

• Establish technical excellence: Participate in architectural decisions, enhance our software delivery and operational processes, and mentor team members.

⛳️ Requirements

• Experienced senior full-stack engineer: Extensive hands-on experience in building and launching products across the stack, deployed on AWS.

• Strong in Platform and DevOps: Practical experience with AWS, infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD, and managing software in production—this is your area of expertise.

• Proficient in backend development: Solid experience with Ruby on Rails (or a similar framework), along with sufficient frontend (React) skills to contribute to the entire product.

• Product-oriented with a focus on platforms: You enjoy creating customer-facing products and are passionate about how software is deployed, operated, and secured in production.

• Practical problem solver: You can see the larger context and break it down into actionable steps that efficiently address the right challenges.

• Leadership and accountability: You are comfortable leading projects and taking ownership of results from conception through to delivery and beyond.

• Interest in AI: A curiosity for integrating contemporary AI tools into user-facing products, as well as utilizing AI to enhance software development speed and quality.

• Team player: You flourish in open, creative, and cross-functional settings.

🏝️ Benefits

• Competitive salary that reflects your skills and experience.

• Opportunity to participate in our Employee Share Option Plan (ESOP) to benefit from the company's long-term success.

• Annual wellbeing allowance and support.

• Generous annual budget for learning and development.

• Home office setup support.

• 4 weeks of annual leave plus an additional day off for your birthday.

• Opportunities for professional growth and development.

• Flexible, remote-first work culture (our headquarters are located in Wellington, NZ, but this position can be based anywhere in New Zealand or Australia).