Staff Software Engineer - Auror Subject Recognition - NZ Remote or Auckland

[We will consider applications from candidates all across NZ - this can be a NZ remote or Auckland based role]

About Auror

At Auror, we’re empowering the retail industry to tackle theft and Organised Retail Crime, a $150 Billion problem globally. It’s high volume crime that’s increasingly organised in nature and is putting people, retailers, and communities at risk every day.

Founded in New Zealand 11 years ago, we’re working with some of the best and largest retailers in the world across the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. Auror is connecting people and intelligence to reduce crime. We’re using technology for good. 

In partnership with our leading retail partners, we need people with the passion, determination, and innovation required to overcome one of the world's largest problems. If you’re looking to make a difference with and for the people dedicated to stopping crime, for good, then we want you on our team.

We're also embracing the potential of AI to supercharge our impact—whether that's enhancing the way we detect trends, support our customers, or improve internal workflows. As a company, we're committed to responsibly incorporating AI into how we work and what we build, and we encourage all Aurors to be curious about how AI can elevate their work, regardless of role or function.

The Role – Staff Software Engineer in the ASR (Auror subject recognition) stream

ASR (Auror Subject Recognition) is one of Auror’s most exciting product areas bringing together software, hardware, AI/ML, design, and customer insights to reshape how retailers prevent crime and create safer stores. As part of this team, you’ll help build a next-generation real-time facial recognition system that operates across both the edge and the cloud, incorporating cutting-edge computer vision and machine learning technologies to build market leading solutions.

You will be a key individual contributor tackling complex technical challenges directly through the code you write. You will act as a key technical leader and decision-maker within your team, guiding and mentoring engineers to help them grow and succeed. Your expertise will be crucial in shaping the technical direction for your team and, on occasion, contributing to broader strategic initiatives that deliver significant business outcomes and raise the engineering bar across Auror.

Your passion for solving the unique challenges of developing and delivering software that run on physical devices at the edge will be instrumental in making you successful in this role, leveraging your core of strong foundational skills and industry experience.

You will need to have the these foundational skills:

• High-performance modern .Net: deep expertise in C# with a focus on performance optimization and memory optimisation to minimise allocations and garbage collection impacts.

• Containerisation on the edge: deep docker skills ideally with experience employing containers on edge devices. This includes multi-architecture builds (ARM64 vs. AMD64), minimizing container footprint (Alpine/Distroless images), and managing container lifecycles without an orchestrator like Kubernetes.
• Linux System Programming: moving beyond "working with Linux" to understanding Linux system internals. Experience with concepts like file descriptors, sockets, processes, and memory management on Linux.
• Experience integrating with third party tools and libraries: skills critical for communicating with the third-party computer vision models and hardware drivers.

And building on your foundational skills, you will have one or more of the following that you draw upon to be successful:

• Resource-Constrained Engineering: track record of designing software for environments with strict CPU and RAM budgets. Capable of profiling applications to detect and troubleshoot memory leaks and CPU bottlenecks.
• ARM Architecture knowledge: understanding of the nuances of deploying to ARM-based compute versus standard x86 servers.
• Fleet Management & OTA: experience designing robust Over-The-Air (OTA) update mechanisms that ensure devices never "brick" in the field. Understanding A/B partitioning and rollback strategies.
• Edge Connectivity & Resilience: designing systems that are "offline-first." Handling intermittent network connectivity gracefully and ensuring data integrity when the camera cannot reach the Auror cloud.
• Security at the Edge: experience with designing and deploying secure solutions and the implications of delivering secure systems on physical devices at the edge.

About Auror Engineering

Collaboration is at the heart of the Engineering team at Auror. We believe that we can only build the very best software by working with each other and seeking different perspectives to solve problems. We’re a team that:

• Ship code to production constantly: Our product team ships code to production on average at least 10-15 times a day prioritising small releases and short feedback cycles and we do this with a minimal defect rate. 
• Work on innovative and up to date tech stacks: We are constantly evolving our technology stack inline with the needs of our business, leveraging React and Typescript for front-end and C# / Dotnet for back end. We host our services in Azure and utilise a wide range of cloud-native services with an evolving service-oriented architecture.
• Contribute to our product: We work with Product Management and Product Design from the very beginning to make sure we’re delivering value to our customers and making a meaningful impact.
• Supports a coaching culture: Together, we support one another to level up
• Continuously improve: We are relentless about getting better and improving our processes, tooling and tech stack.

This role reports to Jared McGill, Senior Engineering Lead - ASR

After working at a few businesses that didn’t get me fired up, I’ve found huge excitement in my job at Auror. I’ve never been able to make such a tangible impact on the community through technology. And cool technology at that! Working remotely from Christchurch, and balancing life with 2 young kids I understand the importance of flexibility.

I’ve been leading the ASR team for 2 years now, but prior was a senior engineer. I absolutely love system design and talking through our options.  The ASR team is an engineering team who heavily value collaboration and connection. We set time aside for fun, and build high trust so we can achieve the best outcomes within the product. The product provides ample growth opportunities as we go from 1:N customers. The team is highly autonomous. We have a team with a diverse range of experience and expertise (a principal, 2 x staff, senior and an intermediate engineer) who all work towards our project goal as a collective. Through high trust we are able to have healthy debate and we value ideas from the whole team. We often have the intermediate setting us straight! We have a dedicated product manager (Penny Down), and a shared designer (Olivia Cato). This team has extremely close communication with the senior leadership team, and customer success as we’re in the early stages of bringing a product to market. Check out my LinkedIn here.

Requirements

As one of our Senior/Staff Software Engineers, you will bring the following:

• Bias to action & ownership: You take full ownership of complex problem spaces bringing urgency, focus, and accountability. You’re not afraid to make pragmatic calls, remove blockers, and drive initiatives forward, even in the face of ambiguity or lack of consensus.
• Technical mastery and judgment: Strong expertise in React, TypeScript, C# .NET Core, and cloud-native architectures. You know how to design distributed systems with clear domain boundaries that balance scalability, performance, security, and usability, and you can articulate trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Strategic thinking: Ability to think holistically about the long-term impact of your work, guiding technical decisions that align with product and company strategy. You bring clarity to complex, ambiguous problems and help chart the course forward.
• Collaboration and communication: Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to create shared understanding across engineering, product, design, and external stakeholders.
• Mentorship and leadership: A passion for growing others whether through direct mentorship, coaching, or by setting examples in technical excellence and pragmatic decision-making. You help raise the bar for the team and build a strong engineering culture.
• Execution in complexity: You break down large, ambiguous problems into tangible, incremental value. Applying strong domain-driven design, you build simple, evolvable architectures that balance speed and learning with resilience and quality.
• AI integration mindset: Curiosity and thoughtfulness in leveraging AI tools and LLMs as force multipliers accelerating delivery and enhancing engineering practices in responsible and scalable ways.
• Values-driven engineering: An interest in topics that extend beyond code, this includes privacy, ethics, security, and how technology can be harnessed for good. You care deeply about the societal impact of the systems you build.
  

We are looking for people who demonstrate a strong alignment to our Guiding Principles (you can find these on our Careers page).

Auror is committed to providing an inclusive and accessible application process to all candidates and we are actively working to improve diversity within the tech industry. We celebrate diversity and inclusiveness at Auror, regardless of (but not limited to) race, gender, sexual orientation, family status, religion, ethnicity, national origin, physical disability, veteran status, or age.

If you need adjustments to any part of our recruitment process because of accessibility reasons, please do not hesitate to let us know during the application process. We will work with you to identify adjustments that will allow you to perform at your best.

Benefits

• Competitive salary Range: Depending on level of experience of IC4 ($150,000 - $175,000)

• Employee share scheme: You’ll own part of a company making a real difference!
• Flexibility: We are hard-working and outcome focused, but recognise there is more to life than work. We promote a healthy work/life blend.
• Shorter work weeks (at full pay): Everyone gets Friday afternoons off, so you can start your weekend early, and do more of whatever it is that makes you happy.
• Health Care Plan: In partnership with Nib, Auror covers 100% of the cost of your individual health insurance plan.
• Focus on mental and physical health: We understand how vital our health is and have policies to support your wellness, including: Wellness Days,  and up to three expert sessions paid for every year.
• Family-friendly: We offer comprehensive parental leave and benefits for primary and non-primary caregivers, including a baby bonus and meals delivered to your door.
• Personal growth: We support our team to participate in courses, conferences, or events that will help them develop their skills.
• Team love: We have regular team lunches and social events where most (if not all) activities are during work hours.

Next steps:

If you’re excited about our mission and you have the experience and a passion for this role, please hit “Apply”.

If you’re not sure that you tick all the boxes but feel you’re close to what we’re looking for, please apply anyway! We’re proud that Auror is a place where everyone can learn and grow so we’d love to hear from you.

You'll be asked to submit a cover letter as part of your application. While this is optional we do encourage it, as we find cover letters can tell a story that resumes alone often cannot. Our hiring team love to understand what attracted you to this role and why you are excited about the opportunity to join Auror.

Once you apply, you’ll hear from us to acknowledge your application. If you have questions about any of the above, or if you have any accessibility requirements, we’ll be able to help you from there.