Staff Backend Engineer – Comms Team

About this role

ABOUT HALTER

At Halter, we’re on a mission to enable farmers and graziers to run the most productive and sustainable operations. Our customers are using Halter to break free from the time-intensive constraints of conventional practices. Imagine watching 500 cattle stand up and walk calmly towards their next break? No quad bikes, no dogs, no fences. Just a group of cattle walking at their own pace. People say it looks like magic. Our customers are revolutionizing grazing with Halter. It's changing lives and transforming an industry. People join Halter to do meaningful work. By joining us you’ll be solving challenging problems within a talented team and a culture built for high performance. Our team out-think, out-work and out-care. We’re committed to delivering real change in the world - this isn’t easy, and in truth, we love that it’s hard.

We’re backed to deliver on a mission that matters by Tier 1 investors including Founders Fund https://foundersfund.com, Bessemer Venture Partners https://www.bvp.com/, BOND, https://www.bondcap.com/ DCVC https://www.dcvc.com/, Blackbird https://www.blackbird.vc/, Promus Ventures https://www.promusventures.com/, Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck and Icehouse ventures https://www.icehouseventures.co.nz/?utm_term=icehouse%20ventures&utm_campaign=Brand+Keywords&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=4064636360&hsa_cam=16902737884&hsa_grp=134004309485&hsa_ad=592971340272&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=kwd-1082530126230&hsa_kw=icehouse%20ventures&hsa_mt=b&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gclid=Cj0KCQjw2v-gBhC1ARIsAOQdKY0J0DepRVFDmjQlAkJPbZuQnLSA5UVzUzOXYiPxkjX-SeVa513_BhkaAr-MEALw_wcB.

To find out more, visit our LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/halter-limited & Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lifeathalter/.

At Halter, we know how much farmers care - for their animals and their pasture. But the tools they rely on haven’t kept up, and we’re on a mission to change that. Halter helps farmers make smarter decisions - fast. We reckon good pasture management is the key to more productive and sustainable farms. More grass. Healthier soil. Happier animals. And more time back for the people doing the work.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

- Designing and building fault-tolerant systems that handle millions of real-time messages from collars and towers

- Scaling infrastructure to support rapid device growth and global expansion, using AWS-native tools like Kinesis, SNS/SQS, and more

- Continuously improving reliability, observability, and fault-tolerance across our messaging and network stack

- Lead troubleshooting complex, cross-functional issues — partnering with firmware, hardware, and product teams to root-cause and resolve tricky bugs

- Owning and leading technical projects — scoping out work, designing specs, distributing tasks across the team, and clearly communicating progress, blockers, and decisions

- Building highly reliable automation to make our collar & tower deployments zero touch and a pleasure for the customer

- Mentoring teammates and helping guide technical direction as we evolve our protocols and infrastructure at scale

YOU'LL BE GREAT IF YOU:

- A seasoned backend engineer who’s scaled distributed systems in production

- Preferably fluent in AWS, or experience with other modern cloud infrastructure

- Familiar with tools like Terraform, load testing frameworks, and chaos engineering practices

- Comfortable working with messaging protocols like MQTT, TCP/IP, and cloud-native messaging systems (e.g., Kinesis, SNS/SQS)

- Strong debugging skills and a deep understanding of system behaviour, who uses data to drive their decision-making

- Comfortable owning high-uptime systems — because cows don’t take days off.

- A growth-mindset teammate who enjoys collaboration, feedback, and moving fast

- Previous experience with LoRa is a huge bonus!

OUR BENEFITS

- Delicious snacks and drinks are available for your daily flow.

- Healthy body, healthy mind. We’re partnered with Southern Cross Health Insurance to support your well-being.

- We offer 6 months of fully paid parental leave for primary caregivers, 4 weeks of fully paid secondary caregiver leave and many other parental benefits that support you and your family.

- Our personal growth is important. Halter offers an annual $1000 self-development budget to be used for anything that fuels personal growth.

- Our time to recharge is valued, we’re offered wellness leave and unlimited paid annual leave.

- Importantly, we offer an inclusive and attractive remuneration package made up of salary, benefits and an employee stock ownership plan.

OUR OFFICE FIRST APPROACH

There’s a reason you visit your friends in person, live with your family and don’t do dinners over Zoom. Humans are wired for connection. We believe a world-class, in-person office culture is the best way for high-performing teams.

Being office first is a core pillar of our culture. We believe in-person connections are key to driving your own growth, learning, impact, and building genuine long-lasting relationships. Strong relationships make it easier to disagree, give feedback, and do meaningful and aligned work. We don’t like having heaps of rules or policies, but this means having strong, trusted relationships is critical.

We’re office first, not office only. This means working from the office everyday is our default setting, but we flex when we need to. We have a high-trust culture, so everyone is trusted to do what’s best for Halter.

Our office vibe is something special, it’s hard to describe until you’re here, but people at Halter who have come from fully remote or hybrid companies say they could never go back - the high energy and spectacular people they are now surrounded by everyday makes work so enjoyable. Your growth, your learning and your impact is truly unlimited here, and a big part of that comes from being together solving problems, innovating, building context, and constantly learning from each…