Senior Software Engineer, Windows/Desktop Applications - Melbourne, Australia

Role overview Lead the engineering of the native Windows desktop client for a text-to-speech reading platform serving more than 50 million people globally. This Senior Software Engineer role, based in Melbourne, sits at the intersection of architecture, accessibility, and product quality within a fully distributed company that has no physical office. Expect a mix of hands-on coding, technical leadership, and cross-functional collaboration.

Responsibilities - Direct the design, architecture, and development of native Windows desktop applications built with the Windows App SDK, WinUI, C#, XAML, and C++ where appropriate. - Set engineering best practices for the Windows codebase, covering performance, memory usage, responsive UI, and Windows 10/11+ compatibility. - Lead accessibility initiatives by integrating Windows accessibility APIs such as Microsoft UI Automation and validating screen-reader, focus, and keyboard navigation support. - Collaborate with product designers, UX researchers, QA, and product managers to shape features, UI/UX architecture, and the long-term Windows roadmap. - Own the full feature lifecycle from conception and design through implementation, testing, release, and ongoing maintenance. - Diagnose and resolve complex bugs, performance bottlenecks, memory leaks, rendering issues, and platform compatibility problems.

Requirements - 3+ years of professional Windows desktop development using Windows App SDK, WinUI or comparable UI frameworks, C#, and XAML, ideally with C++/Win32/WinRT/COM experience. - Strong understanding of Windows application architecture and interop between managed .NET code and native code. - Track record of shipping production-quality desktop applications with attention to reliability, performance, and scalability. - Practical experience with Windows accessibility APIs and a clear commitment to inclusive design. - Solid grounding in object-oriented design, design patterns, data structures, algorithms, memory management, and asynchronous or multi-threaded programming. - Experience leading technical design, mentoring engineers, running code reviews, and making architectural decisions in cross-functional settings.

Nice to have - Writing automated UI tests across unit, integration, and end-to-end layers. - Optimizing desktop app startup time, memory use, high-DPI rendering, and responsiveness under load. - Localization, right-to-left UI, and internationalization experience. - Telemetry, crash reporting, logging, and error monitoring for desktop apps. - Shaping CI/CD pipelines and desktop release workflows.

Benefits and work setup - Fully remote, globally distributed team of roughly 200 people with no physical headquarters. - High-autonomy engineering culture where senior engineers define how problems are solved. - Growth pathways toward technical leadership, including tech lead and architect roles. - Mission-driven product focused on accessible, reliable software that helps people read and learn.