Expression of Interest - Software Engineering

Narrative – Expression of Interest – Software Engineer

We are always on the lookout for smart and talented people to join us at Narrative.

If you do not find the job you are looking for among our current vacancies, feel free to send through your CV and cover letter. We’ll keep this on file until something suitable comes up and we will contact you.

About Narrative

Narrative is one of NZ’s fastest growing software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies. We build products that cater to a market of millions of professional photographers worldwide, working to significantly reduce their processing time by supporting a better daily workflow with AI powered tools. Our AI-powered tools help professional photographers from more than 160 countries improve their photo selection and photo editing workflows, significantly increasing their productivity. With the backing of top-tier Venture Capitalists – including Founders Fund – and a team of exceptionally talented staff, we are committed to driving innovation in this space.

See https://narrative.so/careers for more info about Narrative and our culture.

Why you'll love working here
We're committed to building products for professional photographers who work with people from all genders, ethnicities, racial and religious backgrounds. We think it’s important that our team reflects the same diverse audience. We're actively working to grow a diverse team and offer:

• Flexible and remote working options

• 1 month paid parental leave in addition to government leave

• 30 hours a week for up to 6 months on full pay following return from parental leave (for both birthing and non-birthing parents)

• Extended sick leave to support our team to get through the many things life can throw your way.

• Based in our office on Karangahape Road in Auckland, New Zealand, with the option to work remotely for three days a week. We find it’s important to have time for face-to-face communication, while also allowing some days to work from home, if one wants.

• Competitive salary commensurate with skills and experience, a 6 monthly review cycle, plus participation in a generous employee share option scheme.

About our technology:

Select is an Electron app built using Web technologies such as React and Typescript. Select’s brain is a speedy wee daemon called Maxwell written in Rust. Maxwell does all the heavy lifting for Select, including image processing and ML inferencing.

You might work on:

Depending on your background, experience, and interests, we’re open to hearing from people with expertise in areas like:

• Engineering (frontend, backend, systems, infrastructure)

• Product (management, research, strategy)

• Marketing (brand, growth, content, lifecycle)

• Design (product, brand, interaction)

• Customer success or support

• Operations, finance, or people functions

• AI/ML and data science

We care more about how you think, collaborate, and grow than your job title.

Our ideal candidate:

You're excited to be part of a growing startup that’s building world-class tools for creatives. You bring your own perspective and voice, and you care deeply about doing thoughtful, high-impact work. You might be early in your career and hungry to learn, or you might bring years of experience and want to help shape something from the ground up. Either way, you're collaborative, proactive, and driven to make a difference.

We’re a close-knit team and value people who enjoy working across disciplines, bring empathy to their work, and are excited to take ownership in a fast-moving environment.

Nice to have:

• An interest in photography, and/or a deep understanding of the professional photography software industry.

• Experience with image container formats and codecs such as TIFF, JPEG, HEIF, PNG, etc.

• Experience with image metadata standards such as EXIF and XMP.

• Experience writing C, C++, Python or Elixir code.

• Familiarity with hardware-acceleration APIs such as OpenCL, Metal, Vulkan, WebGPU, CUDA, etc., or familiarity with SIMD.

• Experience in async green-thread environments such as Goroutines, JS Promises, C++ Coroutines or Rust Futures (async/await).

• Familiarity with native software development and distribution on OSX or Windows.

• Familiarity with distributing native code to Web applications, such as WebAssembly or Node.js C++ Add-ons.

• An understanding of machine learning, computer vision or image processing, e.g. PyTorch, numpy, pillow, OpenCV, etc.

• Experience with cloud computing, Docker etc.

At Narrative, we're building AI software to help a wide range of people. We're looking for a team that shares our passion for this work. Research shows that some candidates apply when they meet about 60% of the criteria, while others hesitate unless they meet them all. If you're excited about joining Narrative and eager to grow, go ahead and apply - even if you don't check every box.

If this sounds like you, please apply with a cover letter and CV.