Senior Machine Learning Engineer

• Make an impact in a brand new team on an exciting AI/NLP project!
• Work on a leading property brands impacting millions of users!
• Permanent full time role based in Richmond

We're REA
 With bold and ambitious goals, REA Group  is changing the way the world experiences property. No matter where you're at on your property journey, we're here to help with every step - whether that's finding or financing your next home.

Our people are the key to our success. At the heart of everything we do, is a thriving culture centred around high performance and care. We are purpose driven and collaborative, which drives innovation and our ability to make a real impact. As such, we’re proud to have been named in Australia’s “Top 5” Best Workplaces two years in a row, as well as being recognised as a Best Workplace for Women.

Where the team fits in

The team sits within the property.com.au tribe, part of the broader Consumer Product group, headed up by our Executive General Manager. We are creating new products and solutions that will impact how Australians experience property, today and into the future. Today, property.com.au is Australia’s 3rd largest property site and allows buyers and sellers to research 10 million+ properties, regardless of whether they’re currently advertised for sale. Navigating the property market is complex and can be overwhelming, there are many opportunities to improve the buying and selling journey for Australians. 

Day to day you'll be working with a multifunctional team across product, engineering, analytics marketing and consumer experience. You'll be working with a collaborative environment to align around our consumer and team objectives, advocating for innovative ideas, processes and features that deliver on

This is a unique opportunity to help shape a product from its foundational AI capabilities. As our Senior Machine Learning Engineer, you will be instrumental in designing and implementing the intelligent core of our platform. You'll tackle complex challenges in Natural Language Understanding (NLU), recommendation and ranking systems, semantic search, and personalization, directly impacting millions of users by helping them discover properties in ways they never thought possible. If you're passionate about using AI to solve real-world problems and want to redefine an entire industry, this role is for you.

What the role is all about

• Implementing and optimising ML models for ranking, relevance, and retrieval using embeddings, transformers, and LLMs in production environments.
• Developing robust data pipelines and feature stores to support real-time and batch inference across search applications.
• Establishing automated evaluation and monitoring systems to track model performance, detect drift, and ensure search quality at scale.
• Building production-grade search systems from the ground up, combining semantic and term-based approaches to meet business objectives
• Owning model lifecycle management including versioning, deployment, and CI/CD integration for reproducible experimentation and delivery.
• Primary languages: Python, Java is optional

Who we’re looking for

• Expertise in NLP-driven search systems—semantic and hybrid—including ranking algorithms and analytics to measure relevance, improve performance, and understand user behaviour.
• Extensive experience working in software development, especially in Search, LLM and AI spaces
• Advanced skills in one or more primary languages for research, prototyping, and production-grade ML (particularly Python and SQL)
• Thrives in a fast-paced environment and ability to adapt quickly
• Confidence in ambiguity – this is a first of its kind project in REA in a newly created team, so it will take time for the ways of working to be solidified.
• Passion for innovation and collaboration
• Someone who loves learning and sharing learnings; experience in mentoring/coaching others is ideal.

The REA experience

The physical, mental, emotional and financial health of our people is something we’ll never stop caring about. This is a place to learn and grow.

Some of our Perks & Benefits include: 

• A hybrid and flexible approach to working
• Flexible leave options including, birthday leave and purchase additional leave
• Flexible parental leave offering for primary and secondary carers
• Our Because We Care program offers employees volunteering leave, community grants, matched payroll giving and our Community Café donates 100% of revenue to charity
• Hackdays so you can bring your big ideas to life  

Our commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion  

We are committed to providing a working environment that embraces and values diversity, equity and inclusion. We believe teams with diverse ideas and experiences are more creative, more effective and fuel disruptive thinking. If you've got the skills, dedication and enthusiasm to learn but don't necessarily meet every single point on the job description, please still get in touch.

Join our Talent Neighbourhood

Keen to be part of REA but didn't find a perfect match with this opportunity? Perhaps the timing isn't right? You should join our Talent Neighbourhood!

#LI-HYBRID