Staff Software Engineer - AI

• Pioneer AI Engineering
• Sydney based - Hybrid working model
• Join one of Australia's largest comparison platforms

About Compare Club

Everything we do is aimed at helping customers save money on their household bills. We provide simple, high-value comparison services across multiple expense categories, bringing peace of mind to consumers. With over 500 employees globally across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and beyond, we run on a culture of collaboration, agility, and innovation.

The Opportunity

At Compare Club, we are redefining how software is built. We are looking for a forward-thinking engineer to partner with our Principal Engineer in building the next generation of intelligent applications. At Compare Club, our development paradigm has evolved: we build through spec-driven development and agentic coding harnesses. In this role, you will design and ship native AI capabilities, write precise technical specifications, scale our agentic tooling, and maintain an elite standard for generated code. Because this is a hands-on delivery role, you will also embed within our squads to launch critical product features.

This opportunity is perfect for someone who recognizes that agentic workflows don't eliminate the work - they elevate it, making architecture, specification, and rigorous verification the true engineering craft. Operating with high autonomy, you will solve complex technical challenges, champion modern best practices, and mentor the engineers around you. If you are ready to ship cutting-edge AI into market-leading products, we want to hear from you.

Key Responsibilities

• AI Product Architecture: Collaborate with the Principal Engineer to design and evolve scalable, resilient system architecture for AI-driven products.
• Technical Strategy & Innovation: Evaluate, prototype, and implement new AI technologies, agentic frameworks, and third-party services.
• Feature Delivery: Deliver key product features end-to-end within squads and review both peer and agent-produced code.
• Spec-Driven Development: Lead spec-driven development by writing engineer-authored specifications and driving implementation through agentic workflows.
• Agentic Harness & Tooling: Build and maintain our agentic harness, including context engineering, skill playbooks, and MCP integrations.
• Mentorship & Standards: Mentor engineers in writing specifications, operating the harness, CI/CD, and automated testing standards.
• System Design: Create and maintain comprehensive architecture and technical analysis documents for multi-dependency AI features.
• Project Execution: Lead complex technical projects from concept to launch, navigating ambiguity and managing technical risks.
• Code & Quality Evangelism: Enforce standards for code quality, secure coding, and rigorous testing including unit, integration, E2E, and evals.
• Stakeholder Communication: Translate complex technical constraints, strategies, and project statuses to both technical teams and non-technical stakeholders

The Role

• Architect AI Products: Collaborate with leadership to design resilient, scalable, and maintainable architectures for AI-driven products, taking full ownership of major subsystems.
• Drive Spec-Driven Development: Lead the team’s primary delivery method by writing rigorous specifications and guiding agentic coding workflows to ensure top-tier quality and verification.
• Build the Agentic Harness: Treat our internal tooling as a product. Maintain and extend our harness with Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations, context engineering, and secure tool-calling patterns to lift the entire team's leverage.
• Hands-on Feature Delivery: Act as a core member of our product squads, executing complex technical projects from concept to production, while reviewing both peer and agent-generated code.
• Champion Engineering Excellence: Enforce rigorous automated testing, evals, and secure coding practices designed to mitigate the unique threat models of AI (such as prompt injection).
• Mentor & Elevate: Guide mid and junior engineers, teaching them how to master spec-driven methodologies, context engineering, and modern CI/CD standards.

What You Bring

• Senior/Staff-Level Fundamentals: 5+ years of software engineering experience with a strong track record of shipping production-grade systems and managing technical risks.
• An Agentic Default Mindset: Deep practical experience constructing secure agent loops, building MCP servers, and driving development via technical specifications.
• AI Ecosystem Literacy: Familiarity with major model providers (Anthropic, OpenAI, Vertex AI) and agentic protocols. LangChain or LangGraph is an added bonus.
• High Architectural Judgment: Framework-agnostic thinking with a strong grasp of event-driven architectures and distributed client-server systems.
• A Strict Verification Instinct: Dedication to setting an ultra-high bar for automated testing, evals, and security guardrails within a regulated, payment-adjacent ecosystem.
• Strategic Communication: The ability to seamlessly translate complex AI constraints and system statuses to technical peers and non-technical stakeholders (PMs, BAs) alike.

If you’re ready to take the next step in your career and are looking to work for a company that is constantly growing & evolving, Apply Now!