Neil Fisher

S

Senior Engineering Manager at SoftBank · Scala, Elasticsearch

SoftBank
Melbourne, Australia · AEST (UTC+10)
10+ years experience
Peking University
English
Co-founderOpen to work
Messaging unavailable

Overview

11 years in software engineering, the last 1 at SoftBank, where I lead the search team. Wrote the Elasticsearch service that now handles 21 million requests a day. Most at home with learning to rank and Scala.

Good reasons to reach out
  • People who want to build this with me
  • Roles in search and ranking
  • Thoughtful intros to people in my field
Please don't message about
  • SEO and link-building offers
  • Unpaid work or spec projects

Answers in batches on Fridays

Skills
ElasticsearchScalaPythonlearning to rank
Co-founderLooking for a co-founder
closes in 3 months

Need a technical co-founder: tutoring in Europe

The idea
Tutoring in Europe
Stage
Customer interviews
I bring
8 years in search and ranking
Looking for
Technical co-founder who has shipped B2B software
Commitment
Full-time after funding
Location
Melbourne or remote

I bring 11 years of search and ranking (currently SoftBank). Ideally you've shipped B2B software. Full-time from day one.

Melbourne, Australiapythonelasticsearchscala
Open
Open to workLooking for a role
closes in 3 months

Next role: Software Engineer in media, Melbourne or hybrid

Target roles
Software Engineer
Level
Senior
Industries
Climate tech, Developer tools
Work mode
Remote
Available
Immediately
Work authorization
Authorized to work in Australia
What I'm looking for
A team that ships weekly and owns search end to end.
Not interested in
Night shifts

11 years in search and ranking. Strongest at Elasticsearch and Python. Serving notice now.

Melbourne, Australia · remote OKscalapythonelasticsearch
Open

Experience

  1. Senior Engineering Manager
    Sep 2025 - Present
    SoftBank · 1 yr 1 mo · Full-time · Melbourne, Australia
    • Cut p99 latency on the search services from 743ms to 152ms.
    • Reduced cloud spend on search by 35% in two quarters.
    • Grew the search team from 3 to 39 engineers.
  2. Staff Software Engineer
    Mar 2023 - Sep 2025
    SEEK · 2 yr 6 mo · Full-time · Melbourne, Australia
    • Shipped 11 launches on the search team without a rollback.
  3. Engineering Manager
    Jan 2021 - Mar 2023
    Hyundai Motor · 2 yr 2 mo · Contract · Melbourne, Australia
    • Mentored 12 engineers through their first promotion.
    • Wrote the Scala service that now handles 18 million requests a day.
  4. Software Engineer
    Nov 2018 - Jan 2021
    Toyota · 2 yr 2 mo · Full-time · Melbourne, Australia
    • Shipped a rewrite that took build times from 34 minutes to under 2.
    • Brought on-call pages for search down from 23 a week to 2.
  5. Software Engineer
    Nov 2016 - Nov 2018
    Meta · 2 yr · Full-time · Melbourne, Australia
    • Wrote the Python service that now handles 27 million requests a day.

References

No references yet.

Education

  1. Peking University
    BSc, Electrical Engineering
    2011 - 2015

Details

Compensation expectations
What they are targeting for their next role.
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