Lead Engineer - Full Stack [T500-29600]

About REA Group:

In 1995, in a garage in Melbourne, Australia, REA Group was born from a simple question: “Can we change the way people experience property?”

Thirty years later, REA Group is a global digital real estate leader operating across multiple continents, building large-scale, consumer-facing platforms used by millions every day.

Our success comes from staying true to a day-one mindset—combining innovation, curiosity, and long-term thinking to evolve complex systems that power critical customer journeys.

REA Cyber City is an extension of REA Group’s global technology organization. Teams here work closely with counterparts in Australia and other regions to design, build, and operate core platforms and capabilities. Engineers in Cyber City contribute directly to REA’s long-term technology strategy, solving real-world problems at scale and shaping systems that need to perform, adapt, and endure over time.

If you’re excited by the challenge of building resilient systems, working on meaningful problems, and growing with a global engineering organization—read on.

What the role is all about:

We’re looking for a Lead Engineer (5–8 years’ experience) who acts as the technical anchor for a squad. This role is hands-on and execution-heavy, with accountability for delivering complex features, shaping solutions at a subsystem level, and ensuring high standards of quality, performance, and reliability in production.

The Lead Engineer operates primarily as a strong tech enthusiast, leading through technical depth rather than people management. Success in this role is defined by strong ownership of code and systems, pragmatic design decisions, predictable delivery, and the ability to lift the technical capability of the team through mentoring and example.

This role has strong visibility and impact, particularly in building and evolving REA’s advertising platforms and data-driven products used at scale.

Key Responsibilities:

Technical Execution:

• Own and deliver complex, high-impact features across the full stack.
• Write, review, debug, and test production-grade code aligned with REA engineering standards.
• Lead by example in code quality, correctness, security, and maintainability.
• Actively participate in pairing, code reviews, unit testing, and secure deployments.
• Evaluate technical trade-offs across performance, reliability, scalability, and time-to-value.
• Take accountability for technical deliverables from implementation through production.

Design & Architecture:

• Design solutions aligned with established architectural patterns and system constraints.
• Contribute to subsystem-level design and support broader architectural decisions.
• Drive technical spikes and proof-of-concepts where deeper validation is required.
• Collaborate with Tech Leads and Engineering Managers to ensure designs align with long-term technical direction.

System Ownership & Operational Excellence:

• Own the health of delivered systems in production, including reliability, performance, and observability.
• Identify and address operational risks, scalability concerns, and technical debt early.
• Support incident analysis, remediation, and continuous improvement of system resilience.
• Ensure delivered solutions are operable, supportable, and production ready.

Delivery Leadership:

• Contribute to planning, estimation, and sequencing of work to support predictable delivery.
• Identify risks and cross-team dependencies early and help unblock the team.
• Partner with Engineering Managers, Product, and Delivery roles to balance scope, quality, and timelines.
• Support effective ways of working within the squad.

People & Technical Leadership:

• Mentor and coach engineers through code reviews, design discussions, and technical guidance.
• Share knowledge through technical sessions and informal coaching.
• Help raise the technical bar and reinforce strong engineering practices across the team.
• Foster a collaborative, inclusive, and learning-oriented team culture.

What We’re Looking For:

• Strong hands-on experience building and operating full-stack systems using modern JavaScript/TypeScript ecosystems (React, Node.js).
• Demonstrated ability to own complex features and deliver them reliably to production.
• Solid system design skills with experience evolving systems over time.
• Strong experience with SQL databases and NoSQL databases (PostgreSQL, DynamoDB).
• Hands-on experience with AWS RDS or other managed relational database services.
• Experience working with cloud platforms (AWS), containers (Docker), and observability tooling.
• Good understanding of TDD, CI/CD, and modern delivery practices.
• Exposure to Media / AdTech domains (e.g., bidding platforms, DSPs/SSPs, tagging, CDPs, privacy-enhancing technologies) is highly desirable.
• Ability to influence technical outcomes without formal authority.
• Clear communicator who collaborates effectively with cross-functional and global teams.
• Pragmatic problem-solver who balances doing things right with getting things done.
• Experience working with relational and/or non-relational databases (e.g., SQL Server, DynamoDB).

Bonus Skills:

• Experience with GraphQL, PHP, Functional Programming, or AWS-native architectures.
• Experience building systems that operate at scale and handle high-throughput traffic.

Why join REA Cyber City:

• Work on globally impactful products used by millions.
• Be part of a growing global engineering organization with strong technical standards.
• Influence systems, teams, and culture from an early stage.
• Collaborate closely with global leaders and technologists.
• Grow as a people leader, delivery owner, and technology leader.

The values we live by:

Our values are at the core of how we operate, treat each other, and make decisions. We believe that how we work is equally important as what we do to achieve our goals. This commitment is at the heart of everything we do, from the way we interact with colleagues to the way we serve our customers and communities.