Staff Software Engineer - Machine Learning

Job description

Shape the intelligent core of REA’s platform and deliver high-value, reliable AI/ML products at scale. Permanent role based in Melbourne or Sydney We're REA With bold and ambitious goals, REA Group is changing the way the world experiences property. No matter where you are on your property journey, we’re here to help with every step — from finding your next home to financing it. Our people are the key to our success. At the heart of everything we do is a thriving culture centred on high performance and care. We are purpose-driven and collaborative, which drives innovation and our ability to make a real impact. We’re proud to have been named one of Australia’s Best Workplaces four times since 2021 — including third place in 2025 — as well as Best Workplace for Women in 2023 and Best Workplace in Technology in 2024 and 2025. These accolades are testament to every person who helps make REA a great place to work. Where the team fits in The AI Enrichment squad sits within the Experiences & Platforms business unit. We’re creating new products and solutions that will shape how Australians experience property, today and into the future. You’ll work in a multifunctional team across product, machine learning, engineering, data engineering and consumer experience. Together, you’ll build data and AI products that power experiences across REA, using techniques including audience segmentation, large language models and multimodal vision-language models. What the role is all about This is a unique opportunity to design, plan and deliver high-value, reliable AI/ML products at REA. As our Staff Machine Learning Engineer, you’ll be instrumental in shaping the intelligent core of our platform. You’ll tackle complex challenges in building reliable, maintainable and scalable AI/ML systems that directly impact millions of users — helping them discover properties in ways they never thought possible. You’ll: Lead strategically important AI/ML initiatives, shaping architecture and engineering practices to deliver high-quality product capabilities. Support the Engineering Manager in setting technical direction, uplifting ML engineering capability and championing best practices, ethics and engineering excellence. Collaborate across functions and specialisations to understand needs, set direction and design solutions aligned to commercial priorities. Inform product discovery, delivery planning and technical design with balanced views on feasibility, effort, quality, risk and maintainability. Design, build, deploy and operate end-to-end ML products, pipelines and services using Python, modern ML frameworks and AWS. Own the production ML lifecycle, including experimentation, versioning, evaluation, deployment, monitoring and continuous improvement. Establish robust evaluation frameworks to track performance, detect drift and maintain quality at scale. Develop and optimise solutions across product use cases including LLM engineering, relevance, retrieval, ranking and generative AI. Leverage or fine-tune third-party models, embeddings, transformers and LLMs in production. Build and evolve data and feature foundations for real-time and batch inference, with working fluency in SQL, Airflow, Kafka and BigQuery. Contribute to shared ML platform capabilities that accelerate experimentation, delivery and operational maturity across teams. Raise the bar for engineering quality, technical judgement and team effectiveness through mentoring, solution guidance and cross-squad collaboration. Act as an AI/ML engineering SME, championing the ethical and compliant use of data and helping build REA’s AI/ML reputation internally and externally. Who we’re looking for You’ll bring deep experience delivering production AI/ML systems across machine learning, ML engineering, MLOps, software engineering and modern LLM-based solutions. You’ll also have: Experience leading complex technical initiatives from discovery and solution design through to planning and delivery. Expertise across the full ML lifecycle, including data preparation, training, evaluation, inference, deployment, observability and optimisation across structured and unstructured data. Strong software engineering practices, including test automation, CI/CD and evolutionary architecture, with high proficiency in Python and SQL. The ability to make sound decisions on ML approaches, tools and trade-offs for business problems and product opportunities. Strong leadership and mentoring skills, with a track record of uplifting engineers, influencing direction and building inclusive, high-performing teams. Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to explain strategy, architecture and delivery decisions to technical and non-technical audiences. A collaborative mindset and the ability to work effectively across disciplines to achieve shared outcomes. Strong ownership of production systems, with a focus on reliability, quality and continuous improvement. Curiosity, adaptability and a growth mindset suited to a fast-moving environment. The REA experience The physical, mental, emotional and financial health of our people is something we’ll never stop caring about. This is a place to learn, grow and make a meaningful difference. Some of our perks and benefits include: A hybrid and flexible approach to working. Flexible leave options, including birthday leave and the option to purchase additional leave. Flexible parental leave for primary and secondary carers. Our Because We Care program, offering volunteering leave, community grants, matched payroll giving and a Community Café that donates 100% of revenue to charity. Hackdays so you can bring your big ideas to life. Our values — Re-imagine it, Own it, Do it with heart, Inspire it, Do it as a team and Keep it real — shape how we work, treat each other and make decisions. Our commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion We’re committed to providing a working environment that embraces and values diversity, equity and inclusion. We believe teams with diverse ideas and experiences are more creative, more effective and fuel disruptive thinking. If you’ve got the skills, dedication and enthusiasm to learn but don’t necessarily meet every single point in the job description, please still get in touch. Join our Talent Neighbourhood Keen to be part of REA but didn’t find a perfect match with this opportunity? Perhaps the timing isn’t right? Join our Talent Neighbourhood to hear about future opportunities that could be a great fit.