Founding Senior Software Engineer

Founding Senior Software Engineer

About the job

We help businesses respond to complex paperwork and questionnaires that companies send out when they're choosing vendors - the kind that used to take days or even weeks to complete.

In just 3 years, we've built technology that turns a 900-question form from a multi-day nightmare into a 2-hour task. Our rapid growth (10-20% every month) landed us on the Courier Mail's Unicorn Watch List and won Queensland AI Startup of the Year 2024. Now we're scaling quickly to become the undisputed leader in our category and have a vision of building the largest AI-first company in Brisbane.

Our platform helps satellite companies win new contracts, handles long security questionnaires for Silicon Valley tech firms, and manages due diligence checklists for major Wall Street funds. Sales teams that used to dread these projects now look forward to them. One customer even said their team feels "joy" starting a new one, with another saying "AutoRFP.ai has been one of the most life changing tools that I've used in my career."

Read their stories → autorfp.ai/customer-stories

What makes this role interesting

AutoRFP.ai is an AI-native product - not a traditional SaaS with AI bolted on. Every part of the stack, from document ingestion and search through to answer generation and review workflows, is built around language models and retrieval systems. That means even "standard" engineering work here touches problems most teams never encounter.

You’ll own entire features from concept through to production - not just pick up pre-scoped tickets. The problems are genuinely ambiguous: one month you might be designing how we handle a new class of document format end-to-end, the next you could be rearchitecting a core pipeline to unlock a step change in quality, or leading the technical side of an integration with a major customer’s workflow. The codebase is modern, the feedback loops are short, and you’ll have real influence over the direction of the product.

You’ll have more architectural authority and product influence than most senior roles offer - but within a team that moves fast together and holds a high bar on what ships and how. That means making sound architectural calls, shipping value incrementally rather than disappearing into large pieces of work, and raising the standard of engineering around you. If you like working with good engineers who care about craft but know when good enough is the right call, and you want to see your decisions shape a product used by Fortune 500 companies - this is the right environment.

What you’ll do

• Take features from concept to production as the sole or lead engineer - defining the approach, breaking down the work, and shipping incrementally
• Make architectural decisions across the full stack, knowing when to eliminate technical debt and when to let it ride
• Scope ambiguous problems into deliverable pieces of work - identifying what value can be shipped now versus later
• Write code that's built to be maintained by others, and leave the areas you touch in a better state than you found them
• Ensure your teammates and collaborators can deliver on time - spotting rabbit holes early, clearing blockers before they stall progress, and providing material feedback through code reviews and mentorship that helps more junior engineers grow
• Guide incident response and production issues - helping the team converge on root causes quickly and preventing entire classes of bugs from recurring
• Communicate upcoming technical changes to other departments, linking the work you do to business goals
• Represent AutoRFP.ai credibly to external audiences - whether that’s customer calls, meetups, or conversations with candidates - and run interview processes for IC1, IC2, and IC3 roles

What good looks like

First week: Ship a PR to production - ideally day one. Meet the team. Start watching customer calls to build context on how people actually use the platform.

First month: Own your first feature end-to-end, from picking it up through to production. You’ll have context from the team on what matters and why - your job is to ship it well, keep scope tight, and ask early if something isn’t clear.

First 3 months: Consistently delivering features that customers notice. You can take a problem that could take months and identify what can be shipped incrementally. You’ve built enough context to start spotting systemic issues - and when you raise them, your proposals are grounded in what you’ve seen firsthand. You know when to fix tech debt and when to let it ride. You’re making the people around you faster.

First 6 months: Driving technical initiatives that directly impact customers and business metrics. You’ve shipped enough to have earned real credibility, and you’re using it to push for bigger architectural changes. Helping shape how we hire.

What we’re looking for

We care less about your specific background and more about what your experience has made you. The core difference at this level is that you define the work, not just execute it. Give you a customer problem and some context, and you’ll figure out the right approach, break it down, ship it, and make sure the people working alongside you can deliver too.

Defines the work, not just executes it - You don’t need a fully scoped ticket to get started. You take ambiguous customer problems, figure out the right approach, and break it into shippable increments. But you also learn how a system actually works before proposing how it should change - strong opinions come from earned context, not first impressions.

Strong architectural judgement - You understand the full stack deeply enough to make sound calls about how things should be built. You know when to invest in cleaning something up and when to let it ride. You write code knowing other people will maintain it.

Stays effective when things get hard - When production breaks, you help the team converge on root causes quickly. But pressure isn’t just incidents - it’s tight deadlines, competing priorities, and ambiguous scope. You’ve been through enough of all of these to stay calm and keep shipping.

Multiplies the people around them - You leave code, tooling, and processes better than you found them. Your code reviews help authors reach their own conclusions rather than dictating outcomes. You make it clear what junior engineers need to do to grow, and you catch them before they go too far down a rabbit hole. The team ships better because you’re on it.

Connects technical work to business outcomes - You can explain to non-technical stakeholders why a piece of work matters and what it will change. You represent AutoRFP.ai credibly - to candidates, customers, and partners.

Our stack is TypeScript and Node.js, with Vue on the frontend and AWS infrastructure. You don’t need to have worked with all of these before - we care more about your ability to learn fast, ship well, and make others around you more effective - but depth in at least some of the following will help you ramp faster:

• TypeScript and Node.js in production
• Modern frontend frameworks (Vue or similar)
• Cloud infrastructure (AWS) and CI/CD pipelines
• Working with LLMs or AI-powered product features
• Document processing, search, or data pipelines
• Monitoring and observability (Prometheus, Grafana, or similar)
• Leading technical projects or mentoring engineers

Backgrounds that would be a strong fit

We’re open-minded about where you’re coming from. Some paths that map well:

Senior full‑stack engineers who've owned features end-to-end at a startup or high‑growth company - you know how to take something from “we should build this” to shipped, and you’ve done it more than once.

Backend engineers with strong system design instincts who've built and maintained APIs, pipelines, or infrastructure at scale - you understand how systems evolve and you want to apply that closer to the product.

Product‑minded engineers who've been the go‑to person on their team for turning ambiguous customer problems into working software - you care as much about the "what" and "why" as the "how".

Engineers from AI‑native teams who've built products on top of ML systems and understand the unique challenges - you’ve shipped AI‑powered features and know what it takes to make them reliable at scale.

What won’t you get?

• Layers of approval before shipping
• A narrowly scoped role where you only touch one part of the stack
• Pre‑chewed tickets with every detail figured out for you
• Work that's disconnected from real customer outcomes

Details

Location: Brisbane - this is a full‑time, in‑office role
Type: Full‑time, permanent
Salary: $170k - $240k base depending on experience + super + performance bonus

Further benefits

• Equipment - Latest MacBooks, massive 49" 5k screens, and whatever else makes you effective
• Learning budget - Courses, conferences, books - if it makes you better, we’ll cover it
• Direct customer access - See how your work affects real workflows
• Global reach - Opportunities to visit customers worldwide as we expand
• Great office, great location - Brisbane CBD, easy transport, a space people actually enjoy
• High‑impact work - Small team, real ownership, and features that ship to Fortune 500 companies

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