Senior Full Stack Engineer - React/PHP

2025 is an exciting year to join the Drive team, a business wholly owned by Australia’s largest media organisation, Nine Entertainment with extensive reach across all media channels including TV, digital, social, print and radio.

The Drive vision is to create the future of Automotive in Australia. This is delivered via our simple, all-encompassing three C’s strategy – Commerce, Comparison and Commentary.

Commentary covers the deep knowledge, editorial authority and advice Drive provides for consumers. We are industry leaders in this space. Our team of motoring experts review and drive every car in the Australian market and understand the needs of consumers and brands more than anyone.

Comparison is a growth area where we bring together industry data and expert recommendations to further help consumers compare cars based on their preferences, spec v spec, side by side.

And lastly Commerce, our most exciting growth opportunity. Here is where we can help close the research loop and connect consumers directly to the cars they are able to buy now, via our Drive Dealer network.

Having full service automotive capability under one roof will differentiate Drive amongst its competitors in the future. We are a driven and forward-thinking team who love the automotive industry. Culturally, we strive to inject equal doses of creativity, smart knowledge, and fun into everything we touch

This role facilitates Drive’s product and platform development by planning, design, leading and executing technical solutions and improvements. Reporting to the Engineering Manager and working closely with a Technical Lead this is a hands-on, senior, individual contributor role. You set standards and lead from the front on all technical matters: Architecture, Development, Documentation, Quality and Application Performance. Your strong technical skills, thought leadership and collaborative approach brings out the best from your squad.

• Demonstrated hands-on development experience in a Full Stack environment with PHP, Wordpress and Laravel. 
• Hands-on experience building modern, scalable web applications and reusable component libraries using frameworks like React and TypeScript.

• Experience developing API’s (REST or GraphQL) and stand-alone applications using frameworks such as Laravel and Horizon.
• Hands-on experience implementing solutions on top of SQL and NoSQL databases, comfortable using an ORM system such as Eloquent. 
• Exposure to or experience with front-end frameworks such as Gutenberg will be a plus. 
• Exposure to performance profiling tools such as Blackfire will be highly regarded. 
• Experience developing/maintaining applications with at least one cloud vendor such as AWS or GCP. 
• Understanding of Cloud Infrastructure, Microservices, Distributed Systems, ETL processes etc. 
• Practical understanding of key DevOps principles: Automation, CICD, Observability.
• Experience building high traffic systems that are secure, available, scalable and cost-efficient. Practical understanding of a framework such as AWS’s Well Architected Framework
• Demonstrated ability to ensure applications are built for optimal performance and scalability, including implementing caching strategies, optimising database queries, and identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks.

The Drive office is based in McMahons Point, Sydney, and the team are currently doing 2+ days a week in the office.