About the role
We're considering bringing our software development in-house and want a senior developer to lead it.
You'll own the Loansmart Portal, our integrations and our websites. You'll also set how we build: the architecture, the security and the workflow. Our roadmap is backlogged, so the first job is shipping.
The second is making it safe for the rest of the team to ship too.
Our goal is simple to say and hard to build: conditional approval in about a minute. You'll report to our Operations Manager, who owns the roadmap, and work closely with the CEO, marketing, sales and compliance.
Key responsibilities
Build and ship
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Own the Portal (PHP / MySQL) end to end: new features, fixes and performance
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Build and maintain integrations with lender APIs, Keap CRM, bank statement retrieval, SMS and AI calling, using REST, webhooks and OAuth
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Scope, estimate and deliver roadmap projects against dates, cost and return, and report progress weekly
Lead architecture and security
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Own our technical architecture and plan ahead: what we build, buy or integrate, and how it fits together
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Own cyber security across our systems: patching, access control and MFA, secrets management, logging and monitoring, backups and incident response
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Check the security of vendors and integrations before they connect to client data
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Protect client financial data and meet Privacy Act 2020 obligations in a regulated financial advice business
Enable the team to ship
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Bring our code, hosting and environments in-house: Git, CI/CD, and a pre-production to production workflow
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Build the templates, components and guardrails that let our marketing team create landing pages and A/B tests with AI tools, with you reviewing and approving before anything goes live
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Set the standard for AI-assisted development (Claude Code, GitHub) and review AI-written, contractor and team code
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Support measurement (GTM, server-side tagging, BigQuery) with our Head of Search and Performance
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Document everything, so no system depends on one person's memory
About you
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3+ years of hands-on full-stack development, with strong modern PHP (8.x; Laravel or similar), MySQL and JavaScript, and the front-end skills to build clean, fast pages
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A track record of building and maintaining third-party API integrations in production
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Hands-on security experience: secure coding (OWASP), hardening servers and cloud accounts, and handling a vulnerability or incident
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You've made architecture decisions, not just implemented them, and you're comfortable owning Linux hosting or cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure or similar), Git and deployment pipelines
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AI-first in how you work: you ship faster with tools like Claude Code, Cursor or Copilot, and you have the judgement to know when the output is wrong
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Commercially minded: you measure your work in conversion rates, page speed, fewer drop-offs and more settled loans, not tickets closed
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Experience with CRMs (Keap/Infusionsoft a plus), WordPress, design systems or CRO tooling, or fintech, lending or another regulated industry is a bonus
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Organised, self-driven and clear in writing, able to work independently in a remote team
Subject to satisfactory reference, credit and criminal history checks, with the right to work in New Zealand.
About us
Loansmart is an established New Zealand personal loan brokerage with more than 1,000 verified customer reviews. Following new investment, we're growing, and building our own technology is a key part of that plan.
Benefits
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Fully remote work from anywhere in New Zealand, with equipment and support provided
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A lead role: you set the architecture, security and engineering standards as we grow the team
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Paid AI and development tooling, with the backing to try new ideas
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Direct influence on company growth, with results you can see in the numbers each week
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Room to grow into a Head of Engineering role as we add developers
