Senior Software Engineer
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 31, 2026. First seen by Alion on Jun 18, 2026. Contour Education scores B on the Alion truth index.
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.
Who Are We
Contour was founded in 2020 by students who saw that the quality of your education was basically a lottery. Teachers stretched thin by the system, learning materials that varied from school to school, and support that stopped the moment you left the classroom.
We began with 5 students in a room. Today 15,000+ students have trusted Contour as their academic partners, and we've grown to 500+ team members across 10 campuses in Australia. In 2025 we ranked #8 on the AFR Fast 100 of fastest-growing companies.
We've produced hundreds of 99+ ATARs, tutored the world-record UCAT scorer, and placed 850+ students into medical and dental schools across Australia.
Contour is made up of three brands:
- Contour Education → academic performance in high school
- Contour MedPrep → entry into medical and dental schools
- Contour TestPrep → entry into selective and scholarship schools
Contour is built by students, for students.
What You Will Do
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, 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).
What You Will Bring
- 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 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.
Why You Will Love It
- 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.
How to Apply
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 :)