Staff Software Engineer

Build the technical foundation of a future unicorn.

Thanks is building the only monetisation platform where advertisers, publishers, and consumers all win. We're a product-led organisation, with strong product-market fit. 

We’re now looking for a Staff Engineer to help define the next chapter of our product engineering organisation - technically, culturally, and strategically.

This is a foundational technical leadership role. You’ll be the most senior engineer in the business, partnering with our Head of Product and founders to bring an ambitious vision and roadmap to life, setting the technical bar, and helping us scale both our platform and our team - while remaining meaningfully hands-on.

Why this role exists

Thanks has reached an inflection point.

We have a strong core product in market, new products in development, and ambitious plans to scale. What we now need is stronger technical leadership - someone who has seen what “great” looks like in start-up and scale-up environments, and can help us build towards it deliberately.

This hire will:

• own system-level technical decisions,
• uplift a capable but evolving senior engineering team,
• increase velocity without sacrificing long-term quality, and
• help lay the foundations of a world-class engineering organisation.

When we get this hire right, everything accelerates.

The role

As Staff Engineer, you will operate as a senior technical leader across the platform, without the bureaucracy. This is not a people management role, though there is a clear pathway to formal leadership over time if that’s something you want.

You’ll work as a peer to our Head of Product, challenging trade-offs, shaping technical strategy, and ensuring that engineering choices support both near-term execution and long-term ambition.

You will still write production code - not as your only job, but because the best technical leaders stay close to the work.

What you’ll do

• Set technical direction: Own architecture and system design decisions across key parts of the platform, with a focus on speed-to-learning. You will exercise the judgment to move fast on 'two-way door' decisions - prioritising modularity and refactorability - while applying deep architectural rigour and planning to the rare 'one-way door' decisions that underpin scalability, performance, and reliability.
• Lead complex, ambiguous initiatives: Break down hard problems, design solutions, and take them from idea to production in a fast-moving environment.
• Raise the technical bar: Set contextual quality standards across system design, testing, performance, and developer experience - and lead by example.
• Be hands-on where it matters most: Design and ship meaningful production code, particularly in high-leverage or high-risk areas of the system.
• Partner deeply with Product and founders: Shape roadmaps, challenge assumptions, and help the business make smart technical trade-offs as we scale.
• Develop engineers and culture: Mentor senior engineers, influence technical standards, and help build a high-trust, high-performance engineering culture.
• Prepare us for scale: Improve observability, reliability, and operational practices as our traffic, revenue, and team grow.

Requirements

What we’re looking for

We’re intentionally setting a high bar. You should recognise yourself in most of this:

• Experience building and scaling production systems in product-led start-up or scale-up environments
• Deep expertise across TypeScript / Node.js / React, and strong system design fundamentals
• Proven ability to make good decisions under ambiguity and time pressures, balancing speed with long-term impact
• A track record of technical leadership through influence, not hierarchy
• Exposure to large-scale data systems, analytics, or ML-adjacent problem spaces
• Strong communication skills - able to explain complex ideas clearly and challenge constructively
• A genuine ownership mindset: you see problems, take responsibility, and drive them through to outcomes
• Humility and pragmatism - you care about building great systems and great teams

Nice to have (but not required)

• Experience in adtech, martech, marketplaces, or other complex platform businesses
• Familiarity with Cloudflare’s ecosystem (Workers, Queues, KV)
• Experience operating systems with high traffic, global users, or regulatory constraints

Our stack

• Backend: Node.js, TypeScript, Turborepo
• Frontend: React, Next.js, React Native
• Data: Prisma, PlanetScale, ClickHouse (and other OLAP systems)
• Infrastructure: Cloudflare (Workers, Queues, KV)
• Testing & CI: Vitest, Playwright, GitHub Actions
• Observability: Datadog, Sentry, OpenTelemetry
• Experimentation: Statsig
  

Benefits

Why Thanks?

At Thanks, we’re building a monetisation platform that consumers genuinely appreciate - one that rewards attention rather than exhausting it. We’ve found strong product-market fit, are product-led, and entering our next phase of growth with serious ambition.

This is a rare opportunity to join at a genuine inflection point - when foundations matter most, and individual impact is highest.

Here’s what makes Thanks different:

Foundational impact: You won’t be joining a mature system to optimise at the margins. You’ll help define the technical foundations, standards, and direction that the company builds on for years to come.

Ownership and trust: We hire experienced people and give them real authority. You’ll have the autonomy to make meaningful technical decisions, challenge assumptions, and help shape what “great” looks like at Thanks.

Attractive compensation: Including meaningful equity.

Growth, without chaos: You’ll work closely with our founders and Head of Product in a culture that values courage over comfort, high standards without ego, and kindness without complacency.

Flexibility with intent: We’re Sydney-headquartered and value in-person collaboration, ideally a couple of days per week. That said, we care more about leadership, impact, and outcomes than rigid rules - and we’re open to exceptional candidates across Australia’s east coast. #LI-Hybrid

We’re not trying to copy what already exists. We’re building our own ecosystem - deliberately, thoughtfully, and at scale.

If you’re excited by hard problems, real responsibility, and the chance to help build something enduring, we’d love to hear from you.

Let’s build something extraordinary.