Data & AI Platform Engineering Lead

One New Zealand; Christchurch; Hybrid; NZD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading telecommunications provider in New Zealand seeks a Data & AI Platform Engineering Lead. You will drive the development and operational support of critical Data & AI platforms while mentoring team members. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in cloud technologies, SRE principles, and a passion for continuous learning and mentorship. This role offers flexibility, health insurance, and additional leave options.

Benefits

Flexible work from home options

Southern Cross health insurance

Lifestyle leave

Discounts on company products

Qualifications

• Deep expertise in AWS, Snowflake, Databricks, and Terraform.
• Hands-on experience in SRE/DevOps practices.
• Excellent communication and documentation skills.

Responsibilities

• Drive the operation and evolution of Data & AI platforms.
• Co-design engineering principles with security and privacy.
• Mentor staff and support post-incident learning.

Skills

Service Reliability Engineering (SRE)

DevOps practices

Cloud Technologies (AWS, Snowflake)

Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD)

Communication skills

Tools

Terraform

Databricks

Azure DevOps

Job description

He aha ai tātou – Why us?

At One NZ we’re not just imagining the future, we’re building it. Our purpose? A better-connected Aotearoa New Zealand. Kia renarena te taukaea i Aotearoa New Zealand. Our ambition? To become the most AI-enabled telco on the planet. This isn’t just about our technology, It’s about you. We’re investing in our people like never before... empowering them to grow, lead, and shape what’s next.

Through our AI School, access to world-class learning platforms, or career pathways that evolve with you, we create an environment where your curiosity thrives, and your skills accelerate. Join us and be part of something extraordinary: connect with purpose and help redefine what’s possible.

Uia mai koe te pātai, he aha te mea nui o tēnei ao? Māku koe e ki atu he tangata, he tangata, he tangata. “If you asked me, what is the greatest thing in this world, I would say it is people, it is people, it is people.”

Ko Tō Mahi – What You’ll Do

As the Data & AI Platform Engineering Lead you’ll drive the operation and evolution of One NZ’s core Data & AI platforms, enabling product teams to deliver faster, more reliably, and with fewer incidents. You’ll work closely with business product owners and domain leads to translate demand into a transparent, prioritised platform backlog aligned to customer and commercial outcomes.

You’ll co-design with Engineering and Architecture to embed critical patterns — including security, privacy, FinOps, networking, identity, and observability — from inception through to production. Your influence will guide platform outcomes across squads, ensuring readiness gates and change flows are simple, visible, and auditable.

This role provides cross-disciplinary operational support across Engineering, SRE, DataOps, and AIOps, working shoulder-to-shoulder with squads and managed service partners during business hours and after-hours. You’ll help standardise infrastructure-as-code (IaC), CI/CD, and observability patterns, define SLOs and error budgets, shape resilience and recovery strategies, and support post-incident learning. In DataOps and AIOps, you’ll help set quality thresholds, standardise deployment and rollback processes, and ensure robust governance across data and AI services.

Beyond technical leadership, you’ll mentor others, share knowledge, and help grow internal capability — ensuring our Data & AI platforms remain trusted, scalable, and production-grade foundations for One NZ’s future.

Na Mātou Rourou – What You’ll Bring

• Deep expertise in AWS, Snowflake, dbt, Databricks, and Terraform, with strong knowledge of identity management, CI/CD pipelines, secrets handling, and observability frameworks.
• Hands-on experience in SRE/DevOps practices including metrics, logs, traces, incident response, change management, and on-call readiness.
• Strong understanding of SLOs and cost stewardship.
• Proven capability in privacy-by-design, least-privilege IAM, encryption, audit trails, policy-as-code, cost tagging, budget variance control, and optimisation strategies.
• Excellent communication and documentation skills.
• A collaborative mindset with a passion for mentoring, pairing, and continuous learning.
• Demonstrated success in leading sprint planning, backlog prioritisation, and managing squad capacity and dependencies using tools like Azure DevOps (ADO).

Nā Mātou Te Rourou – What You’ll Get

• One New Zealand is leading the way by ensuring you can have a truly balanced life. Most roles allow flexibility to work from home and flex your hours to enjoy work & whānau commitments.
• A fully subsidised Southern Cross health insurance cover for you and your family.
• Laptop, unlimited data plan and a market leading mobile phone
• Lifestyle leave, giving you the option to purchase an extra week or two of annual leave.
• Discounts on One New Zealand products, services and much more!

Joining our whānau is more than starting a new job - it’s the beginning of a journey that will challenge and inspire you to play a role in something bigger.

Tū hikitia rā, tū hāpainga. Tū hāpainga, tū hikitia rā. We stand to uplift, to support and to elevate others.