Lead our toughest engineering challenges and set technical direction
Drive engineering excellence through standards, patterns and guardrails
Shape what’s next in AI augmented engineering and secure, accelerated delivery
We are establishing Principal Engineering within Software Engineering at NZ Transport Agency | Waka Kotahi (NZTA), bringing together deep technical expertise, strategic influence and hands on leadership. You’ll work across teams and platforms, tackling complex challenges, shaping long term engineering direction and growing technical capability across NZTA.
Te Whiwhinga mahi | The opportunity
Software Engineering is at the heart of end-to-end digital delivery at NZTA, and we are establishing Principal Engineering to strengthen technical leadership across our teams, platforms and delivery.
As a Principal Software Engineer, you’ll combine strategic thinking with deep, hands-on technical expertise across our frontend, backend, mobile and integration engineering landscape. You’ll stay close to delivery, stepping into complex engineering challenges while influencing longer term technical direction.
You’ll also be a trusted technical advisor to the Chapter Lead, with the opportunity to influence the future of Software Engineering at NZTA, grow technical capability and advance our ambition for engineering excellence, AI augmented engineering and accelerated delivery with a strong security posture.
We’re a community of software engineers who help each other grow, build excellent software and recognise that engineering is a team sport. We never stand still. We are always learning and always improving.
You will:
Provide hands on technical leadership across complex, high impact engineering challenges
Lead the development and adoption of engineering standards, patterns, guardrails and reusable approaches
Lead the evolution of AI augmented engineering, identifying, proving and scaling approaches that improve how we design, build, test and deliver software
Bring systems thinking across frontend, backend, mobile and integration engineering
Influence software strategy, technical direction and significant engineering decisions across teams and platforms
Provide enterprise level technical design leadership and proportionate assurance for significant or high risk work
Guide detailed technical decisions, balancing quality, cost, security, resilience and long term sustainability
Mentor engineers from graduate through to senior level, growing technical capability and future technical leaders across the chapter
Build alignment across Engineering, Architecture, Security, Platforms, Product and delivery teams, navigating dependencies and competing priorities
Champion DevSecOps, automation and shift left security across the SDLC
You will find out more about the role the Position Description .
Ko koe tēnei | About you
You’ll be an accomplished technical leader in software engineering, combining deep technical credibility with strategic thinking, exceptional communication and the ability to influence across teams and disciplines.
You’ll be future focused, curious and genuinely passionate about engineering. We’re looking for someone who brings energy and ideas, inspires others and can turn emerging opportunities, particularly AI, into practical engineering outcomes.
To be successful in this role, you will bring:
Deep software engineering expertise and excellent analytical and problem-solving capability, with a track record of tackling complex engineering challenges
Experience establishing and embedding engineering standards, patterns, guardrails, Golden Paths and reusable approaches
A future focused vision for AI augmented engineering, with the curiosity and technical leadership to experiment, prove and scale new approaches
Broad technical expertise across modern software engineering, with the depth and judgement to lead across backend, frontend, integration, data and cloud technologies, including environments such as Java, Spring Boot,…