About the role
📡 Real-time IoT. 🐄 Real-life impact. 🌐Real-world scale.
At Halter, we’re building more than software — we’re transforming the way the world farms. Our smart collars let farmers shift, monitor, and care for their cattle via deep integrations & insights. Behind it all is the Network Team, powering one of New Zealand’s largest private IoT networks with 300,000+ connected devices and counting.
We’re looking for a Staff Backend Engineer to help scale our systems to a million animals and beyond. You’ll architect the backend that keeps every collar and tower connected — reliably and in real time, across the globe.
Our vision is to become the OS for farming globally. This isn’t your average backend gig — this one moos 🐮. You’re not just writing code — you’re ensuring uptime for hundreds of thousands of animals and farmers who rely on Halter every single day.
What your day could look like
- 🧠 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 services 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
Who we’re looking for
- ✅ 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!
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.
Top Skills
What the Team is Saying
What We Do
We bridge deep tech into farming. Halter enables farmers to remotely shift, virtually fence and proactively monitor their cows’ health and behaviour. Can you imagine watching 500 cows or cattle walk calmly towards the milking shed or their next break? No quad bikes, no dogs, no fences. Just a mob of cows walking at their own pace. People say it looks like magic. Our customers are revolutionising farming with Halter. It's changing lives and transforming an industry.
Why Work With Us
There's something special about being surrounded by spectacular people making real change in the world. At Halter, you'll do your best work, with the best people and have the biggest impact in a culture grounded in performance.
Gallery
Halter Offices
Hybrid Workspace
Employees engage in a combination of remote and on-site work.
Our field teams are often on the road however, we believe that in-person interaction is key to building a high-performing culture so there will be times when we would like our team to meet in person.
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