Data Platform Lead

Precision Farming; Halswell-Hornby-Riccarton Community; On-site; NZD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Precision Technology Group (PTG) is building a next-generation data platform to unify Precision Farming and NuPoint across NZ and AU. The Data Platform Lead will architect, build and own the platform, guiding engineers and partnering with product and commercial teams to deliver data-driven value.

You will work in a greenfield environment, establish engineering practices, and drive data governance, security and privacy to meet agricultural compliance in NZ and AU.

Qualifications

• Strong data engineering background with pipelines, ETL/ELT, APIs and integrations.
• Experience owning data platform architecture, data quality and integrations in a product/SaaS environment.
• Solid SQL and hands-on PostgreSQL; comfortable with real-world data.

Responsibilities

• Design and build a unified data platform largely from scratch, including architecture and data models.
• Own the platform for transactional geospatial timeseries data and integrations.
• Establish modern engineering practices and CI/CD in an AI-assisted AWS environment.
• Build and operate data flows to/from partners and machinery telemetry.
• Develop the data lake and pipelines turning raw field and machine data into analytics-ready datasets.
• Lead the data platform roadmap and governance in NZ/AU compliance.

Skills

Data engineering

Platform architecture

SQL

Python PySpark

AWS data services

Geospatial data

Team leadership

SaaS experience

Product mindset

Tools

PostgreSQL

PySpark

AWS (Glue, Step Functions, Lambda, S3)

Job description

Jora New Zealand will close on 9th September 2026. Thank you for being with us, we are cheering you on as you continue your career journey.

Our vision is simple: every machine connected.

At Precision Technology Group (PTG), we're building the data platform that underpins modern agriculture. Our platforms — Precision Farming and NuPoint — connect farmers, growers and their contractors and advisors across New Zealand and Australia to the machinery, guidance and rural-supply systems they rely on every day: John Deere, Trimble, Topcon, Tirotech, Ballance, Ravensdown, Grapelink, Vintrace, Chemfresh and a growing ecosystem of integration partners. The result is optimised & connected vehicle operations, managed inventory, proof-of-application data that shows what went where and when.

Data is at the heart of everything we do. And right now, we're looking for a Data Platform Lead to build it.

Make a real impact

This is a purpose-led, technically demanding role for someone who wants to do meaningful platform engineering at the frontier of agricultural technology. You'll lead the design and be hands on in the build of PTG's next-generation data platform — the engineering foundation that underpins our applications and integrations, bringing our two established platforms together into a single, unified base that will support how we grow across the Tasman and into new markets.

It's a greenfield mandate with real technical authority, in a business where your decisions stick and your work is visible. And as the platform matures, you'll grow with it — becoming the CTO's closest technical partner and the senior voice on data across the business.

The role

Today we run two separate, application-centric data systems — Precision and NuPoint — each built tightly around its own product. We are building our next generation greenfield data platform: one that manages our multi-partner integrations, handles transactional geospatial timeseries data at scale, makes sense of overlapping spatial data drawn from different systems, and turns raw field and machine data into something genuinely useful at scale.

You’ll be in the detail — architecting and building the platform, establishing engineering practices, and working in a modern, agentic AI-led CI/CD environment built on AWS data-platform tools. You’ll be the person who makes sure that when a job is done in the paddock, the right data lands in the right place, every time.

You won’t be doing this alone. You’ll work closely with an Application Lead and an Integration Lead — together, the three of you form the technical core of the business.

What you’ll do

• Get under the hood of both Precision and NuPoint — understanding how each system works today as the foundation for what comes next.
• Design and build a unified data platform largely from scratch: the architecture, data models and integrations that bring both products together and connect our machinery, guidance and rural-supply partners.
• Own the platform that manages transactional geospatial timeseries data — the core data asset underpinning our applications and integrations.
• Establish modern engineering practices from the ground up — patterns, standards and CI/CD in an agentic, AI-assisted delivery environment built on AWS.
• Build and operate reliable inbound and outbound data flows to and from partners and machinery telemetry.
• Build the data lake and processing pipelines that turn raw field and machine data into analytics-ready, governed datasets.
• Build data quality in from the start — validation, reconciliation and automated error correction — so proof‑of‑placement and compliance reporting are accurate and reliable.
• Lead the data platform roadmap: the infrastructure and capabilities that make reporting, analytics and insight features possible for our customers.
• Establish pragmatic data governance, security and privacy practices appropriate to NZ and AU agricultural and environmental compliance.
• Lead, grow and develop the data platform team — hiring, mentoring and setting clear technical direction.
• Partner with product and commercial to turn platform capability into customer value.

What you’ll bring

• Strong data engineering background — pipelines, ETL/ELT, APIs and integration across messy, heterogeneous systems.
• Demonstrated ownership of data platform architecture, data quality and integrations in a product or SaaS environment.
• Strong SQL and hands‑on PostgreSQL; comfortable with imperfect real‑world data.
• Strong Python, including PySpark, for processing data at scale.
• Hands‑on with AWS data services — Glue, Step Functions, Lambda and S3 — and building on a data lake architecture.
• Experience with transactional, high-volume timeseries data.
• People leadership — you can build and develop a team and shape its culture, while staying hands‑on and close to the work.
• The ambition and judgement to grow into a senior technical leadership role.
• Agritech, IoT, telematics or machine‑data experience.
• Experience with geospatial data and spatial data platforms.
• Experience working with streaming data.
• Familiarity with NZ and AU agricultural and environmental reporting and compliance.

Why PTG

We're a focused, purpose-driven NZ business with platforms operating across two countries and a product roadmap that includes robotics, autonomous vehicle integration and AI-driven agronomic insight. You'll join a collaborative team where the work is technically interesting, the problems are real, and what you build genuinely matters to the farmers and growers using it every day.

There's real scope to make this platform your own — to shape what it looks like, how it grows, and where it goes next.