About the job

Are you a full-stack developer who's happiest across the whole stack, but finds yourself drawn to the interface end of it? We'd love to hear from you!

About Acorn

At Acorn PLMS, we are on a mission to transform the corporate learning experience. Our cutting-edge Performance Learning Management System (PLMS) software is powered by AI and designed to ensure that what people learn directly contributes to their exceptional performance in business. Corporate performance and learning needs a revolution, and Acorn PLMS is the antidote. We are the only solution that guides learners step by step to master the specific capabilities required for their roles, ultimately accelerating organisational performance.

Location

We are open to individuals based in Sydney or Canberra — this is an in-office role.

Role Overview

You'll join our full-stack team building the Acorn platform end-to-end — APIs, data and services, through to the interfaces our learners, managers and administrators use every day. You'll take scoped features from requirements through to release with minimal supervision, working across whatever part of the stack the work calls for.

We're being upfront about one thing: our pods currently skew towards backend depth, and we'd particularly love to hear from developers who gravitate towards the front end. There's meaningful interface work waiting, and experienced engineers here to learn it from. You don't need to be a front-end specialist today; you do need to want to become one.

The 5 Key Capabilities for This Role

The best part… we use our Acorn software at Acorn. We believe in the power of our Managers and Staff being aligned on the 5 capabilities needed for each role, and the level that we expect for any given role, using our Acorn AI tool to streamline this consistently across our business. The 4 levels comprise Foundational, Developing, Proficient and Advanced.

Here are the 5 key capabilities for the role and the level expected to give you an idea of what the role entails:

• Software design and implementation: Design, build, and evolve maintainable software to meet user and business needs, delivering reliable, secure, and high-performance outcomes. Level — Proficient: At the proficient stage, you turn scoped requirements into robust, standards-based software. You write tested code, review peers' code, document decisions, release increments, use metrics to improve performance and reliability.
• Quality engineering and testing: Define, engineer, and validate software quality end to end to prevent defects and deliver reliable releases that protect customer value and meet business standards. Level — Proficient: At the proficient stage, you own quality end‑to‑end for your features. You set acceptance criteria, automate tests, focus on highest‑risk areas, and triage defects with QA to improve reliability.
• Task ownership and agile delivery: Own, plan, and iteratively deliver scoped work, aligning stakeholders and managing dependencies and risks to achieve predictable, high-quality outcomes that create customer value. Level — Proficient: At the proficient stage, you own work from analysis to release, plan and estimate. You deliver testable increments, clarify criteria, flag risks, and meet Definition of Done to raise velocity.
• Collaboration and stakeholder communication: Align, communicate, and negotiate with stakeholders to clarify priorities, manage risks, and make effective trade-offs that enable timely, high-quality delivery and customer value. Level — Proficient: At the proficient stage, you work with product, design, QA and operations. Clarify requirements, share status, raise risks with options via agreed channels. You negotiate in-scope trade-offs for smooth delivery.
• Operational awareness and security: Anticipate and manage operational and security risks to deliver resilient, compliant services that protect data and sustain customer trust. Level — Proficient: At the proficient stage, you ship secure, instrumented code and follow change/release/incident processes. You manage secrets, monitor and triage, keep runbooks with operations and security teams, reducing risk and downtime.

Key Responsibilities

• Build and maintain features across the full stack, from scoped requirements through to release, owning your work from analysis to production
• Pick up the front-end share of your pod's work with enthusiasm — turning designs into clean, reusable, well-tested components that serve the platform and the roadmap
• Help lift the front-end quality bar in your pod — sharing what you're building, and applying our interface standards consistently in the work that ships
• Write and automate tests at the unit, integration and end-to-end levels, setting clear acceptance criteria for the features you own
• Apply accessibility, responsiveness and cross-browser standards consistently in the interface work you ship
• Work day-to-day with Product, Design, QA and operations to clarify requirements, share progress and flag risks early
• Review peers' code and take part in team code review, documenting the decisions behind your implementation choices
• Ship secure, instrumented code, follow change and incident processes, and help triage and fix defects wherever in the stack they surface
• Use performance and reliability metrics to improve what you've built rather than moving straight on to the next ticket
• Contribute to improvements in team tooling and ways of working, and support Associate Developers informally as you grow

Required Experience

• Commercial experience building and maintaining production web applications across the stack
• Confident working knowledge of modern JavaScript/TypeScript, a component-based framework, and at least one server-side language, plus solid CSS, semantic HTML and relational data fundamentals
• Experience delivering scoped features independently, including clarifying requirements and estimating your own work
• Comfort with automated testing, Git-based team workflows and CI/CD pipelines
• Ability to work directly with Product, Design and QA, communicating progress and raising risks clearly and early
• A real pull towards the front end. You don't need to be a specialist, but we'd love someone who cares about accessibility, interaction detail and interface performance, and who wants to build genuine depth there with support from people who already have it
• Sound judgement about when to solve a problem yourself and when to seek guidance — we expect questions on unfamiliar territory, not silence
• An appetite to keep learning your craft

AI Fluency

At Acorn, we use AI across everything we do, and are actively building our AI fluency across the business. We are genuinely excited about what AI makes possible in software engineering, and we want someone who feels the same way.

In this role, that looks like:

• Using AI coding assistants to move faster through scaffolding, refactors, test generation and unfamiliar parts of the codebase — without letting quality or your own understanding slip
• Leveraging AI to speed up debugging, code review preparation and keeping documentation current across services and components
• Using AI to turn designs and requirements into working prototypes quickly, so ideas can be tested with real people sooner

We are not looking for someone who can talk about AI in the abstract. During the interview process, we will ask you to talk us through what you have actually built, the tools you use daily, and the results you have seen - we love seeing how people are evolving and enhancing the ways they work with AI.

Why Join Acorn PLMS?

• Your work is visible and it matters — over 3 million learners globally will use what you build
• Breadth by default: you'll work across the stack rather than being boxed into one layer
• A deliberate path into front-end depth, with experienced engineers around you rather than working it out alone
• We build in the open with AI, and we'll back you to experiment with the tools that make you better at your job
• We use our own product to align on capabilities and growth, so your development path is explicit rather than guesswork

Location

We are open to individuals based in Sydney or Canberra, Australia. We are an office-first company, meaning we work from our local offices the majority (if not all) of the time. We want to create cool stuff with great people, and we know from experience that is best done through daily moments like the coffee run, walk to grab lunch, or quick huddles. Being able to capitalise on this is key to our ongoing success and a large part of the reason we can work at the pace we do. Please note candidates will need to be in commuting distance to our offices based in Sydney or Canberra CBD.

Applicants must have full working rights in Australia to be considered for this role. Unfortunately we are unable to provide visa sponsorship at this time.

Our Recruitment Process

Acorn is committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone feels valued and respected. We are an equal opportunities employer and welcome applications from all qualified candidates. We aim to ensure that our recruitment process is fair and accessible to everyone and encourage candidates to request any accommodations needed during the application or interview stages.

About Acorn

Acorn is the hub for learning and performance for over 3 million active learners globally. The work you do — whether that's writing lines of code, designing the layout of a dashboard, or talking to customers — helps real people grow not just professionally, but personally.

There's still so much more to do, and we need people who are keen to help us journey into the next phase on board! To find out more about life at Acorn, our Values and working with us, check out our website at https://acorn.works and see our Life At Acorn video here! https://youtu.be/2BGUk-n3FrQ?si=U_sS1Y5ZSP0tNtZW

If you build across the stack but can't walk past a clunky interface without wanting to fix it, we'd love to see your application.

Requirements added by the job poster

• 2+ years of work experience with Software Engineering Practices

• Authorized to work in Australia