Cloud Engineer

About the role

Halter enables farmers to grow and graze more grass through the use of virtual fencing. Every farm is deployed with communication infrastructure, a collar for each animal, and is paired with a mobile application. The result is tens of hours of labour saving per week, improved animal welfare, and increased productivity and sustainability of the land.

To continue to deliver on this mission the software platform team is looking for an experienced cloud engineer to help migrate some of our systems onto self-managed open-source alternatives.

Currently hosted on AWS we are exploring working through breaking our tight dependency on their managed services to enable greater flexibility in configuration and deployment as we scale globally. This will see us adopt Kubernetes into our technical stack. Unlike most Kubernetes migrations, however, this will require an intimate understanding of the systems involved and the backend code given the usage and implementation details of each service. This requires a cloud engineer with a strong coding background who isn’t scared to go deep on the domain they are working in to get the best result.

As part of this you will work with a small but deeply experienced team with a strong mindset of IaC, a love for autonomy, and a small number of stakeholders, all of which ensure we are able to make decisions fast. You will operate across the entire tech stack working with a variety of teams in tight collaboration to ensure teams both understand are able to support the changes being made.

Looking beyond this immediate migration, we will continue to explore opportunities that give us greater flexibility in configuration, deployment and cost as we continue to expand our product across more regions globally - all of which will require someone of the same ambition and skillset as we grow.

In doing the above successfully you’ll help develop technology that farmers rely on daily to monitor their pasture and protect their livestock, directly impacting farming practices worldwide.

Who we’re looking for

• Technical ability: Someone who has a great understanding of a wide spectrum of technical disciplines. A degree in software engineering, mechatronics engineering or similar is a HUGE bonus, but not a requirement.
• Proactivity & high ownership: Halter is a complex business. We're looking for someone who is a go-getter and is naturally inclined to find problems and solve them end to end. It doesn't matter what skills or experience you have, you see a problem and you figure it out. No SQL experience for a data project? Go learn it and solve it.
• Critical Thinking: Someone with strong opinions, loosely held. Someone who thinks critically, and applies first principles thinking to find the solution we need, and not just the solution we want. 
• Impact-driven: We’re looking for someone who works for more than just a paycheck. Someone who is intrinsically motivated by the impact their work has on real people and real animals.

What your day could look like

• Extremely motivated, wants their work to matter, and is not afraid to push hard to help Halter achieve its mission
• Love working as part of a high-performing team with high ownership and high accountability.
• Prioritise understanding the complexity of the domain and have the ability to build deep empathy with our farmers.
• Deeply experienced in cloud infrastructure and backend coding with a love for solving hard problems and the know-how to scale a system to millions of end users. You're able to work in any technical stack but ideally have experience in AWS and Kubernetes, and have used Kotlin and/or Go at scale.
• Unphased by large codebases and even larger problem spaces.
• You thrive in ambiguity, don’t mind working with evolving requirements and perform at your best with high levels of ownership and accountability.
• A strong communicator who defaults to transparency and openness in decision-making while also being decisive to enable consistent momentum.
• A team player that values collaboration, drives the team’s performance and excels in giving and receiving feedback.
• Understands the importance of the Halter system as part of any farming business and holds the quality bar to 24/7 reliability and availability.

Why our team loves working at Halter ❤️

• Dedicate yourself to solving real-world problems alongside an epic team in a culture designed around growth.
• A genuine and shared connection to our mission to make a difference in the world.
• The pride of joining an iconic New Zealand technology company. The excitement, risk, and reward of a high-growth technology scale-up on the global stage.
• Our ideas are truly valued, we are able to move fast, and our impact is real.
• State-of-the-art, dog-friendly office that’s been thoughtfully designed right in the heart of Auckland city. Did we mention dogs and cows?
• 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.
• We offer an inclusive and attractive remuneration package made up of salary, benefits and an employee stock ownership plan.
• Delicious snacks and drinks are available for your daily flow.

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.

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 other.

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 Bessemer Venture Partners, DCVC, Blackbird, Promus Ventures, Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck and Icehouse ventures.

To find out more, visit our careers website, LinkedIn & Instagram.

Join our team

Halter is committed to promoting a diverse and inclusive workplace — a place where we can each be ourselves and do the best work of our lives. Research shows that while men apply to jobs when they meet an average of 60% of the requirements, women and under-represented groups of candidates tend to only apply when they meet every requirement. If you think you have what it takes but don’t necessarily tick every requirement on this job description, please still get in touch and apply to Halter. We’d love to chat to see if you’ll be an epic fit!

If this opportunity sounds like you, please apply below by sending through your cover letter explaining why you’re excited about this role and working at Halter, along with your CV, and we’ll be in touch!

Please also feel free to check out the careers page for more information on working at Halter and don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn & Instagram.