Design and strengthen enterprise security controls across NZTA
Apply secure-by-design guardrails and control patterns at scale
Provide specialist expertise across critical technology platforms
Location: Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Palmerston North or Christchurch
This is an exciting opportunity to join NZ Transport Agency | Waka Kotahi (NZTA)’s Security Platforms team, helping design, deploy and mature enterprise security controls that protect critical services and support secure digital delivery across one of New Zealand's largest and most complex technology environments.
Te Whiwhinga mahi | The opportunity
We're looking for an experienced security engineering specialist to join as a Principal Security Specialist within NZTA. This senior technical role is responsible for designing, deploying and continuously improving security controls within an assigned security domain while ensuring enterprise guardrails and control patterns are effectively implemented across platforms and delivery teams.
As Principal Security Specialist, you'll act as the technical and business subject matter expert for your assigned security domain, ensuring enterprise security controls are implemented, operating and demonstrably effective across platforms, products and services.
Working alongside the Manager Security Platforms, security specialists, architects and engineering teams, you'll provide expert technical guidance, contribute to enterprise security standards and support the ongoing evolution of NZTA's security control environment.
You will:
Design, deploy and maintain enterprise security controls within an assigned domain
Review security designs, technology selections and implementation approaches
Apply enterprise guardrails and control patterns to platform and delivery environments
Identify control gaps, design weaknesses and emerging security risks
Contribute domain expertise to security standards, policies and guardrail development
Provide expert technical guidance to engineers, delivery teams and platform owners
Document and share security patterns, domain knowledge and engineering insights
Apply AI-assisted security engineering and advisory tooling responsibly and effectively
Support escalated security incidents requiring specialist platform and domain expertise
Contribute to NZTA's incident response capability, including participation in response activities where required.
You will find out more about the role here - Position Description
Ko koe tēnei | About you
You'll be an experienced security engineering professional with deep technical expertise, strong problem-solving capability and the ability to influence security decisions through credibility and trusted advice.
You'll bring hands-on experience implementing security controls and translating complex security requirements into practical solutions that can be successfully adopted by delivery and platform teams.
To be successful in this role, you will bring:
Extensive experience designing, deploying and operating security controls across complex cloud, hybrid and IoT environments
Deep expertise in one or more security domains such as cloud, application, infrastructure, network or identity security
Strong knowledge of NZISM, Protective Security Requirements (PSR) and enterprise security frameworks
Experience applying security standards, control patterns and guardrails within delivery environments
The ability to identify, assess and communicate security risks to technical and business audiences
Experience contributing to enterprise security standards, patterns and reusable security artefacts
Practical experience with security automation, infrastructure as code and control as code approaches
Experience using or governing AI-assisted security design or advisory tooling
Strong stakeholder engagement skills and a track record of influencing outcomes through technical expertise.
Relevant tertiary qualifications and industry certifications aligned to your specialist security domain, such…