Where to work in Sydney
August 19, 2006
This page lists some of the cooler places to work in Sydney if you’re a top class technology engineer, or enjoy working with them. My friends and I became a little despondent when first looking for a job, while completing our final year of university. There was an apparent lack of employers who could really offer an exciting environment, working with great people at solving hard problems. Since reaching the workforce I’ve discovered a few more, one by one, and they’re listed here for your job-hunting pleasure.
A PhD can also make for a satisfying challenge and will make you even more attractive an employee, but I won’t presume to suggest a university. If you’ve decided to break from the fold, companies like those below are always hiring the right kind of person (and if you’re one of these companies, I can introduce you to some of the right kind of people).
Companies I know about
I know something about these companies, from experience, interviews or friends on the inside.
Atlassian make my favourite issue tracking software in the world, JIRA. If I was a Java kind of guy I’d definitely be checking them out. It sounds like they have a good environment topped off with a great fridge. Founded by some UNSW graduates not too many years ago.
A successful Australian games developer. BigWorldTech split from Microforte a few years ago to focus on development of infrastructure for MMOGs; they develop an MMOG engine and client libraries, allowing game developers to focus on the pretty stuff. The connection with Microforte is still pretty close (they share an office in Glebe) but Microforte concentrate on the development of complete game, and have been doing so for about 20 years. They don’t have so much of a startup atmosphere as some of the younger companies here, but creating games has to be fun.
The research arm of Canon. Their main customer is Canon Inc. in Japan, but they do a mix of product research and exploratory research. A lot of image-related work, of course, but I’m told there’s a bit of variety. They have a great work atmosphere with good facilities and plenty of lunchtime activities, but being in Ryde puts a bit of a dampener on after-work activities. The resources of a big company but well separated from the demands of being in the same building as marketing and sales teams.
A very young company with a very cool technology, Emotiv are building hardware and software systems that allow mind-control of computers. Yep – that’s right; you wear a helmet that monitors your brain waves and then some funky software algorithms running on the helmet itself do the processing and pattern recognition before feeding simplified representation to the host computer. Their first target application is games, where the system can pick up on a player’s emotional response and modify the gameplay in response. Their small Pyrmont office is open and minimal. Founded by a pair who may have yet to see out their twenties, I think being part of this team would be one hell of a ride.
If you want to work for Google then it’s probably hard to do better. Part of the maps team (including the founders) are in Sydney so you’ll need to be interested in related applications to stay in the Darling Park office, but their presence here is also a great help if you’re keen to work in California or New York. Their Sydney office is pretty funky and they’ve brought most of the Google experience over here. Googlers work very hard and get treated (and paid) very well. They’re recruiting very aggresively at the moment, but standards are high. Expect most of the other outfits on this page to lose a couple of engineers to Google.
A small but apparently highly successful group based in Double Bay, Macromatix have a web-based franchise management application, which looks after almost every aspect of owning and running a franchise business or head office. Their founders have a strong pedigree, including the founder of ComTech (now Dimension Data). Their Australian customer list is impressive, and if the trend continues in the U.S. I expect Macromatix to grow fast.
A young company founded by some University of Sydney alumni, Sensory build hardware and software to support network monitoring (antispam, antivirus, IDS etc) at wire speeds. Their customers are device manufacturers who build Sensory technology into gateway devices. The atmosphere is quite casual in their East Sydney office with about 30 hardware and software engineers plus a few non-technical employees. Sensory are definitely still a startup, but have grown to become one of the larger ones in Sydney. They also have offices in the UK, US and Asia, where most of their customers are. Performance junkies would fit in well.
Silverbrook
So secretive I can’t even find a web page, Silverbrook are Australia’s most prolific patent applicant, which appears to form their sole revenue stream. Founded by CISRA breakaway Kia Silverbrook, a quick scan of their patent portfolio shows a deep investment in printing technology and miniaturisation, with a few other seemingly unrelated (but cool-souding) inventions. I haven’t visited their Balmain office but they apparently employ some 300-odd engineers, so the atmosphere is probably quite creative.
Companies I want to find out more about
These sound great, or I’ve heard good things, but don’t have a lot of information.
Finance and market analysis, stock market fraud prevention and so on.
Telecoms, comminications inftastructure. Probably pretty cool, but I don’t have details on what they do in Australia.
Wireless and wired media networking systems for the home.
Industry standard lighting products, worldwide renown, made in Aus. C++ on Linux. This particularly appeals to me as a bit of an audio/visual geek. I’d love to know what it’s like to work there.
There are quite a few technology startups in Australia which I have much less information about (although I plan to change that by meeting entrepreneurs). There’s a list of some web startups (with blurbs) at ReadWriteWeb, and a much larger list over at AustralianWiki.
September 9, 2006 at 9:55 pm
[...] You may have noticed, way over there in my list of Pages, a link entitled Where to work in Sydney. It’s a list I’m composing of places you might like to work if you’re a top software engineer/scientist, or particularly like working with them. I’m hoping it will be helpful to scientists/engineers like me while searching for somewhere to apply their talents; my contribution to the mobility of Sydney engineering skills. Absolutely no-one has asked me “why have you made that list?”, and this is my response to them. [...]
March 8, 2008 at 9:59 pm
i’ve heard dolby do good stuff here and are a fun place to work. it was a few years back that i heard it but they’d be worth checking out.
May 23, 2008 at 12:30 pm
well been doing an insane number of interviews lately and Optiver also seems like a great place to work.