Senior Software Engineer (kotlin) - Remote Eligible

Senior Backend Engineer

We're Airtasker, the Australian tech company that connects people who need to get things done with those who have the skills to do it. We are Australia's number 1 marketplace for local services, headquartered in Sydney, creating more than $1bn of income since we started in 2012 for our community members.

It doesn't stop there though, we have since gone global through taking Airtasker to the US and the UK creating new marketplaces in these areas of huge opportunity! We also grew our business in 2022 through the successful acquisition of trades-focussed Australian marketplace, Oneflare!

Our mission is to empower people to realise the full value of their skills. This doesn't just apply to those who use our product. It's also for our whole team of go-getters who bring the product to life and deliver impact to our community on a daily basis. Because we believe work (and life) is always better when you truly know and appreciate your strengths and skills.

We're looking for a Senior Backend Engineer with deep Kotlin experience to join our platform team. Over the next year, we'll be focusing on complex challenges in authentication, payments, and moderation. You'll be hands-on in designing and delivering these systems, with plenty of scope to shape how they're built.

We work remotely across Portugal and Vietnam. The team runs async-first, with a couple of hours' overlap each day for the occasional sync.

What You'll Do:

• Build and maintain backend services in Kotlin, with some work in Ruby as well.
• Lead development of auth, payments, and moderation features with security and reliability front of mind.
• Design schemas and queries for relational databases (Postgres), using caching where it makes sense.
• Contribute to technical direction and help set conventions for the wider engineering group.
• Write clean, tested code and take part in thoughtful code reviews.
• Collaborate across time zones in English, both written and spoken.

What It Takes To Be Successful In The Role:

• 5+ years of professional experience in backend engineering.
• Strong background in Kotlin (or another JVM language) and keen to work across Ruby and Kotlin.
• Solid grasp of authentication, authorisation, and API security.
• Experience with payments or similar high-reliability systems.
• Comfortable with monitoring/observability tools (Datadog, Prometheus, etc.), Git, and CI/CD.
• Good understanding of caching (Redis/Memcached) and SQL optimisation.
• Proactive and reliable — someone who spots issues early and takes ownership.

It Would Be Great If You Have:

• Exposure to Kubernetes and AWS.
• Experience with microservices or event-driven systems.
• Infrastructure-as-code (Terraform or similar).
• Any experience with trust & safety, fraud detection, data privacy, or payment systems.

Our People Experience:

Our people team at Airtasker are dedicated to designing an industry leading people experience. This means creating an environment where you are empowered to do your best work and realise the full potential of your skills.

Thriving

• Hybrid working - when it comes to working, there's no "one size fits all" approach, with Airtasker you choose the environment that helps you do your best work.
• Airtime - welcome to no Slack and meeting-free Fridays! Airtime is designed so we regularly have dedicated focus time for work and personal growth.
• Recharge days - each quarter we have a company-wide Recharge Day, equivalent to 4 additional days of leave per year. It's a day for everyone when the world can wait and self-care takes centre stage.

Rewarding

• Fair and equitable pay - this is a core commitment to our people. Every year we review industry data to ensure our compensation framework supports everyone to be recognised for the full value of their skills.
• Tenure leave - To celebrate our people's commitment to Airtasker, we offer tenure leave starting from your 3rd anniversary with the company. This begins with 3 extra days of leave per year, gradually increasing to a maximum of 5 days per year.

Belonging

• DAREtasker - join our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee! Every month we meet to create meaningful and impactful programs of work that embrace belonging at Airtasker.
• Celebration swap - not everyone celebrates the same things. That's why, at Airtasker, you can swap national, state or territory public holidays for the ones that matter to you.

Growing

• Learning and development - learning at Airtasker is on the job, guided by managers, enhanced by peers and led by ourselves. We deliver learning programs and budget allowances to invest in your growth.
• 360 performance reviews - feedback is a gift. Every year we run 360 reviews across the business to recognise achievements and promote personal growth.
• Volunteer leave - Our team members can take a day each year to lend a helping hand and support a cause they are passionate about.

Celebrating

• Awards - and the winners are… our go-getters! Whether it's our peer-nominated quarterly Values Awards or our periodic Go-Getter Spirit Award, we love celebrating our people and spreading good energy.
• Vibe committee - good vibes only! Our Vibe Committee delivers events that hit the sweet spot of bringing us all together to enjoy each other's company whether you're local or remote.
• Birthday leave - All of our people get an extra day of leave during their birthday week to take time away from work to celebrate.

At Airtasker we believe in culture add - that each person is different and has their own background, learnings and unique experiences that can add to the Airtasker cultural tapestry. We pride ourselves on our inclusive culture, and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds.