Senior Machine Learning Engineer

Across 20+ years of delivering financial planning and analytics products that are powerful yet simple to use, we’ve tackled complex challenges head-on. Along the way, we’ve had our share of failures, but we learn fast, adapt, and keep moving forward. 
This mindset keeps us at the leading edge, creating products that don’t just help businesses; they change the way people work. 

Our mission: Help people feel good about data. Phocas holds vast amounts of customer data and is a central tool for customers to improve their businesses. 

Having recently released a new Insights SaaS product to market — and seeing strong adoption — we’re now expanding the team to seize the opportunity ahead. That’s where you come in. 

What you’ll be doing 

• Applying classic machine learning and data techniques alongside emerging AI methods to automatically generate insights from vast amounts of customer data — starting in the sales domain, with many more problem spaces to follow. 

• Helping productise and scale a new product that combines Phocas’ long track record of success, deep customer knowledge, and modern data techniques to deliver measurable impact — saving customers time and helping them grow. 

• Working with real-world, messy data across global customers, balancing pragmatism with innovation. You’ll thrive in a product team that values fast feedback, close collaboration with customers, and shipping products people genuinely love and use every day. 

What we’re looking for 

• Hands-on ML & data skills — experience applying machine learning, statistical, or data engineering techniques to real-world problems, ideally in a commercial SaaS or product context. 

• Engineering mindset — ability to build scalable, reliable solutions that work with messy, complex data at production scale. 

• Pragmatism with curiosity — excited about new AI/ML methods but grounded enough to ship things that work and deliver value fast. 

• Growth mindset — eager to learn, adapt, and keep improving, both in your craft and as part of a team. 

• Sense of urgency — bias for action and focus on outcomes; you know how to balance exploration with delivery. 

• Collaboration first — a great communicator who enjoys working closely with product managers, engineers, and customers to co-create solutions, as part of an empowered team. 

Why work at Phocas? 

• The people – we hear it all the time: our team is the #1 reason people love working here. 

• Plenty of fun and social events – including the occasional silly game and lots of food. 

• 10% professional development time – every engineer gets one day per fortnight for learning. 

• A sunny Sydenham office with lots of space and parking for all types of wheels. 

• Southern Cross health insurance, life, TPD, and income protection cover. 

• Extra paid parental leave. 

• Flexible/hybrid working options. 

Phocas is an Accredited Employer and typically we are strong supporters of international talent, but due to current visa settings and processing times, we can only consider applicants with current NZ working rights.

We do not currently offer a fully remote option.

Recruiters, please note: We don’t accept unsolicited agency resumes

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