Senior Software Engineer

Turn ideas into features thousands of students rely on.

At Contour, we've grown from a scrappy startup into a high-growth scale-up, and we've ranked on AFR's Fast 100 four years running (#8 in 2025). Our engineering team builds the learning platform that thousands of students, parents, and tutors use every day, and in 2026 it sits at the centre of where the organisation is heading.

We're hiring a Senior Software Engineer to help our Engineering Lead deliver that vision. You'll be one of the most experienced engineers on the team: deep in the code, trusted with the harder features, and a steady technical presence the team can lean on when the Lead is stretched.

You're product-first. You stay close to the student outcome and don't get lost perfecting docs or code while the feature waits, and you keep the path from idea to shipped feature smooth. You bring a strong point of view and push back when something doesn't make sense, then commit fully once a call is made.

Reporting to the Engineering Lead, you'll take on meaningful features across our Learning Portal and the services behind it, with a modern stack and the AI tooling to build well and ship quickly.

At Contour, we’re reshaping education, one student at a time. 

Born from the frustration of students who knew the system could be better, we set out to build what we once wished existed: tutoring that actually works. Not generic classes. Not recycled notes. Not overpriced, overcrowded rooms with an out-of-touch teacher who couldn’t relate. But a complete ecosystem of tutoring, resources, and support, meticulously designed to help every student reach their full potential. 

Since 2020, over 10,000+ students have trusted Contour to guide their academic journey, and we’ve grown to over 300+ team members. We’ve produced hundreds of 99+ ATARs, tutored the World-Record UCAT scorer, and placed more students into medical school than any school in Australia. 

Our growth is a testament to the simple philosophy: Put the student first, always. Everything we design, from our world-class tutor-training programs to our purpose-built campuses, exists to help students master content faster, perform with confidence, and even rekindle the joy of learning. 

Contour is a group of three brands united by one goal: to give every student the best chance to achieve their full potential:

• Contour Education: Reshaping how students master their high school subjects with small-group tutoring, structured resources, and 1-on-1 support across Maths, Science, and English.
• Contour MedPrep: Reshaping medical preparation with a proven, step-by-step pathway through the UCAT, interviews, and admissions, led by a team of 100+ medical students. 
• Contour TestPrep: Reshaping test preparation, starting with the selective entry exam, through rigorous tutoring, mock exams, and data-driven feedback to give students a decisive advantage. 

This is Contour. Built by students, for students.

Reporting to the Engineering Lead, you'll be a senior hands-on contributor, building features end to end and helping the team ship them smoothly.

• Ship full-stack features: Build and deliver features across the stack, from Next.js UI and API routes to Go services and Supabase edge functions, keeping the path from idea to production smooth.
• Support the vision: Work closely with the Engineering Lead to deliver the technical roadmap. Bring your own view, help prioritise issues sensibly, push back where it helps, and commit fully once a direction is set.
• Stay product first: Make pragmatic calls that get value to students sooner, including clear build-vs-buy decisions where an existing tool or service is the right choice. Write the tests and docs that genuinely help the team ship and maintain, without gold-plating while students wait.
• Ship in meaningful increments: Break large changes into reviewable, deployable steps so the team can keep momentum, reduce risk, and learn from production quickly.
• Keep quality high: Give thorough PR/MR reviews, keep test coverage meaningful, and write documentation that helps the team keep moving.
• Be there for the team: Be a dependable technical presence on the harder problems, especially when the Lead is in meetings.
• Help systems scale: Contribute to new systems and improve existing ones, working across greenfield and brownfield with IaC (SST or Pulumi) and our cloud setup (AWS, Vercel).

• Engineering Expertise: You bring 5+ years of full-stack development experience and are fluent in our core stack: TypeScript, Next.js, PostgreSQL, and Go.
• Technical Breadth: You have experience with ORMs (preferably Prisma), IaC solutions (preferably SST or Pulumi), Vitest or Jest (for integration and unit testing), and monorepo tooling like Turborepo.
• Cloud Proficiency: You're familiar with Supabase and AWS services, and you understand how to deploy via Vercel or similar pipelines.
• Professional Standards: You write clean PRs and code, are experienced with GitFlow branching, implementing CI/CD pipelines, and configuring GitHub Actions, and you're comfortable in issue-tracking tools like Linear or Jira.
• Pragmatic and Product First: You make sensible trade-offs between scope, quality, speed, and ownership with the student outcome in mind. You know when to build, when to buy, and how to break big work into increments the team can review, deploy, and learn from.
• A Strong Teammate: You give thoughtful PR/MR reviews, write clear documentation, and help the engineers around you. You disagree well and commit fully.
• Dependable: You're comfortable being on-call, and you take responsibility for the features you ship.
• Mission-Aligned: You're genuinely here for the mission of helping students, and you let better student outcomes guide your technical decisions.
• Bonus: Experience in a fast-paced startup or scale-up environment.

• High Impact: You'll build the platform thousands of students across Australia use to learn, and your work ships and gets used quickly.
• Trust and Autonomy: Room to do your best work in close partnership with the Engineering Lead and the team, without being micromanaged.
• A Team of Builders: You'll work alongside other experienced engineers and learn from one another.
• Outcome-Focused Culture: We value outputs and outcomes over hours in a seat.
• Flexible Environment: Hybrid-friendly work from anywhere, with some on-site time at our Glen Waverley or Melbourne CBD campus to connect with the team.
• Growth Potential: Room to grow as the organisation scales into a national education group.
• Competitive Package: Salary range of $160,000 to $180,000 AUD + super, plus extra leave, EAP access, and lifestyle perks.

👉 Ready to make a real impact?

Application Process

• Submit your application.
• Shortlisted candidates will complete a video interview and technical assessment.
• Suitable candidates will then be invited for a panel interview.

Feel free to reach out directly to [email protected] if you have any questions :)