Senior Engineer

What Disco Labs does

We write software that powers commerce for hundreds of merchants across the world, including some of the biggest brands on the Shopify platform. Our core product is Submarine, a platform for building bespoke customer experiences around subscriptions, memberships, pre-sales, crowdfunding and more.

Our vision is to build Submarine into a core piece of the world’s global ecommerce infrastructure while helping thousands of businesses flourish along the way – and do it all as part of people-first company built on trust, innovation and excellence.

Role overview

Engineers joining us at this early stage will have the opportunity to shape and build out our product from its early stages in collaboration with our engineering, product, delivery and customer support teams. We’re still a small company, so it’s a great opportunity to have an outsized impact while still knowing everyone’s name (and their pet’s name, too).

We’re very much invested in the careers of our engineering team and look to provide ongoing opportunities for professional development, mentorship and menteeship. One of the ways we do this is via our Junior Engineering Academy, a program which we believe is pretty unique for a company of our size.

Our ideal Senior Engineer candidate has at least five years’ experience working as an engineer in a professional context, with at least some exposure to Ruby. They’re comfortable owning and leading tech projects, serving as a mentor to other engineers, and know that developing great software requires teamwork and collaboration, not just code.

We have openings for both local (Melbourne, Australia) and remote candidates, although we expect remote candidates to have normal working hours within a 3 hour timezone difference of AEST. Whether local or remote, you will be employed full-time within Australia, so you should have the right to work in the country. Sponsorship may be possible in certain circumstances.

We encourage candidates of all backgrounds and identities to apply – we are committed to building a team that represents the diverse world we live in. All applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, or age.

We want to speak to people directly - no recruiters please!

What you’ll be doing

• Leading a small (3-4 person) team to write and maintain code for Submarine, our core product;
• Working closely with our Technical Director to design and architect the next iteration of the Submarine platform;
• Sharing your knowledge and experience with the other engineers at Disco, helping the rest of the team to level up their development and communication skills;
• Using interactions with customers to design and implement new features;
• Enhancing Disco’s reputation as a leading software company through initiatives like community engagement, developing case studies, contributing to open source, or other activities.

Who you’ll be working with

• Your direct manager will be our Technical Director Dave, a highly experienced Ruby engineer who’s responsible for all things technical at Disco;
• You’ll be working closely with the entirety of our small (< 10) engineering team to plan, write and ship code, especially within the team you’re leading;
• You’ll have day-to-day contact with our delivery, customer support, and product management teams, who’ll be helping you make sure we’re building the right thing for our customers.

Core skills required

• You have experience coding and deploying web applications that service real-world customer needs;
• You have previously worked in a technical leadership capacity to design and deliver a feature or service to production;
• You’re a communicator, who recognises that developing great products requires teamwork and close collaboration, not just code;
• You have a “get things done” attitude and have a bias for shipping code over perfectionism;
• You enjoy sharing your experience and skills with others, and get satisfaction from helping another engineer work through a tricky problem;
• You’re curious and like to dive deep into what you’re working on and learn new things.

Skills that are “nice to have”

• You have had some exposure to Shopify, ecommerce, or payments, either as a merchant or as a developer;
• You have front-end development skills, potentially having worked with things like React and Sass before;
• You have experience designing either REST based or GraphQL APIs;
• You like to share and teach others, as evidenced by (for example) blogging, working on open source projects or speaking at events;
• You have experience with multiple languages and frameworks.

Things we don’t need

• You don’t have to have a degree or any particular formal training – we’re more interested in the work you can and want to produce than a piece of paper;
• You don’t have to be co-located in our Melbourne office. We have openings for both remote and local candidates (although if you are applying for a remote role, your normal working hours must overlap within 3 hours of AEST).

What we offer

• We want you to be comfortable, so we will offer you a competitive salary with leave and benefits. We will be offering a base salary of between AUD$152,565 to AUD$171,615 (ex super) for this role, alongside a meaningful equity stake in the business taking the total annual package to between AUD$191,821 and AUD$212,776;
• You will have a large degree of creative freedom in how you tackle design and development problems, but we’ll provide you with all the support you need to learn and grow your skills;
• We place an emphasis on personal development, with dedicated time scheduled for self-directed learning and exploration and a personal learning budget to invest in yourself;
• We have a flexible work policy that’s designed to help people fit work around life, not the other way around. We’re happy to accommodate early/late starts for school pickups, easing a commute, or other ongoing commitments. This extends to working from home and remote work;
• We have a company-wide day off every third Wednesday as an opportunity for a mid-week relax and recharge;
• Opportunities to work remotely anywhere in the world for extended periods of time;
• We offer a profit sharing scheme to all employees, as a way for everyone on the team to share our successes;
• Monthly wellbeing allowance you’re free to spend on new running shoes, yoga classes, mindfulness classes - whatever keeps you happy and healthy;
• We offer one annual day off per year for employees wanting to do charitable work;
• We match any annual charitable donations made by employees up to $250;
• We run a twice-yearly offsite retreat to take a step back, reflect and plan for the rest of the year.

Our values

We have four core values that guide our work.

• We are genuine - We don’t use empty words, or present a facade of what Disco is like as a company, either to team members or to customers. We pride ourselves on transparency. We are human, and recognise that everyone else is too.
• We are invested - We care about what we’re doing, and seek to only do work that has a genuine impact for our customers. We care about each other, and want everyone to grow, learn and succeed in their role. We put the needs and wellbeing of people above deadlines, profit, or arbitrary company goals.
• We are experts - We pride ourselves on our deep technical knowledge. If it can be done in the world of ecommerce, we can do it. We openly teach what we know to our ecosystem through events, groups, products and open source. We know that there’s always more to learn. We set a high standard internally, and hold ourselves and each other to that standard.
• We deliver - We don’t make empty promises. If we say we’ll get something done, we’ll get it done — whether it’s a commitment to a customer or a commitment to a teammate. We surprise and delight our customers by going the extra mile when we can.

Learn more and apply

We value transparency, so if you’re keen to get more insight into what it’s like working at Disco, our company handbook is public.

Of particular interest to applicants may be our Engineering Career Framework, which aims to lay out the expectations and responsibilities for each engineering role within the company, as well as provide a map for advancement. This Senior Engineer role sits at the IC4/TL4 level of that framework.

If Disco sounds like the right place for you, you can learn more about our Senior Engineer application process and get your application under way!