Lead Software Engineer

Westpac Bank; Auckland; On-site; NZD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

4 weeks standard holiday + 5 wellbeing

Banking benefits, insurance discounts

Growth and development – internalmobli

Volunteer days

Job summary

Westpac New Zealand is seeking a Lead Engineer in Digital to collaborate with Engineers, Designers, Architects and key stakeholders across the bank to shape long-term engineering direction and deliver customer-focused outcomes. The role blends hands-on development with leadership, mentoring, and enabling teams to continuously improve engineering practices.

You will guide squads across full-stack delivery, ensure security and performance, and drive a culture of automation, architectural

Qualifications

• Requires hands-on engineering leadership with a strong focus on shaping long-term engineering direction.
• Experience leading cross-functional squads delivering full-stack features in a banking environment preferred.
• Proficient in modern software development practices, architecture design, and measuring team performance.

Responsibilities

• Provide strategic technical leadership across the technology area, aligning with business strategy and target architecture.
• Balance hands-on coding with leadership, mentoring, and coaching to uplift squads.
• Ensure reliability, security, and performance while driving continuous improvement and engineering excellence.
• Lead planning, roadmaps, and governance with Architects, Principal Engineers, and product stakeholders.
• Influence cross-team priorities and manage technical debt to enable end-to-end delivery.

Skills

Hands-on leadership

Full stack squad experience

Agile teams experience

Cloud platforms

CI/CD pipelines

Unit testing & code reviews

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.

Provideshandsontechnical leadership across up to twosquads, ensuring highquality delivery, modern engineering practices, and strong collaboration that drivescustomerfocusedand strategic outcomes. The role balances a breadth of technical expertisewith guiding, enabling, and uplifting the team while continually improving ways of working and engineering excellenceacrossDigital.

As a Lead Engineer in the Digital team, you will play a pivotal roletocollaborate with Engineers, Designers, Architects, Craft Specialists, Principal Engineers, and key stakeholders across the bank to ensure we:

• Provide strategic technical leadership acrossyourtechnology area, shapinglong‑termengineering direction and ensuring decisions support both the business strategy and target architecture
• Build solutions aligned withbest industry practice
• Influence and ensure engineering decisions are aligned with business goals to support the technical roadmap
• Identifyand advocate for opportunities to drive business value through technology,identifyingandleadingorganisation wideimprovements
• Shape,championandcomply withinternal standards and policies
• Minimise and manage technical debt
• Support and role model agreed squad work practiceswhile fosteringa positive team culture, improving team health and reduction of cognitive load
• Create adevelopment community shaping shared behaviours and engineering culture
• Shape sprint goals that align with delivery, customer, and strategic outcomes
• Be viewed as a subject matter expert
• Accountability for operational readiness

This role balances hands-on engineering with leadership responsibilitiesdriving a development community beyond squad level.You’llspend approximately 50% of your time contributing directly to squad work, and 50% enabling, mentoring, and guiding your team to continuously improve. The exact balance may vary based on squad needs and leadership direction.

Team Performance

• Ensure your team produces high-quality work and delivers on time, including surfacing trade-offs and key decisions
• Act as the first point of contact when engineers face difficulties
• Support engineers by providingstructured coaching and career guidance, creating growth opportunities for engineers across squads
• Remove obstacles and blockers for your team
• Absorb outside distractions and noise to keep the team focused
• Ensure the team achievesconsistentvelocity
• Use metrics to guide decisions and improve team performance
• Take ownership of end-to-end delivery of features and systems
• Ensure reliability, scalability, and performance of owned systems
• Ensure security best practices are embedded in design and implementation
• Champion continuous improvement through retros and experimentation
• Drive initiatives that improve team health

Technical Expertise

• This is a hands-on role, where you will actively contribute to coding,leadarchitectural decisions, set technical direction,solution design, and technical leadership within your team
• Stayup to datewith the latest technical requirements in digital and the wider business, as well as industry standards
• Leads responsible AI adoption by setting clear guardrails, evaluating risk,maintaininghuman accountability, and building shared capability to improve engineering effectiveness
• Champion engineering excellence and ensure we move towards our target architecture with every decision we make
• Review and approve pull requestsand be proficientwith CI/CD Pipelines
• Be an expert in one field while being able to work across multiple areas
• Monitor and troubleshoot system performance on an ad-hoc basis
• Manageand escalationincidents assigned to the team
• Work with thePO/SOto Manage andprioritisetechnical debt
• Developexpert‑levelknowledge of the features your squad delivers, whilemaintaininga solid understanding of the surrounding product areas, systems, and teams your work connects with

Planning and Leading

• Work with Architects & Principal Engineers to designnew solutionsyour squad will deliver
• HelpPO/SOproduce realistic roadmaps and plans
• Influence cross-team priorities
• Resolve organisational level blockers
• Work on design documentation andguidethrough relevant governance processes
• Where relevant, attend Design Council alongside relevant TAL to ensure designs are aligned with RED Frameworkcapability
• Work with thePO/SOto ensure non-functional requirements are planned for and delivered
• Escalatetorelevant colleagues and management when the team faces technical problems theycan’tsolve
• Work with the team to refine and flesh out stories, breaking down work into manageable pieces for the team to deliver
• Work with your squad,deliveryand ways of working practitioners to coordinate deployment and releases for the team's work
• Collaborate across squads and departments to solve systemic challenges
• Influence engineering standards and practices across the wider org

Mentoring and Team Culture

• Work with other Lead Engineers to ensure there is a consistent approach to upskilling/mentoring other Engineers
• Mentor and up-skillAssociate Engineers, EngineersandSeniorEngineersproviding regular feedback
• Promote a positive team culture
• Facilitate effective communication within the team
• Encourage opendebate butsupport the final decisions
• Promote process improvements, both technical and ways of working
• Advocate a culture of Automation
• Coach and mentor the team in advanced programming techniques such as effective unit testing, dependency injection, asynchronous IO,etc
• Support the growth of your peers byencouraging stretch opportunities and growth pathsacross multiple levels
• Contribute to a psychologically safe and inclusive team culture

Nā tāu rourou | What will you bring?

Experience

• 5+ years relevant experience.
• This Lead Engineer role will support a squad that covers the full stack so a range of experience is required
• Able to speak about experience leading small teams (not necessarily as a line manager)
• Experience in Agile Teams, who have had Development and Operations responsibilities
• Institutional Banking experience highly desired

Skills and Knowledge

• Proficient in modern software development practices and tools
• Strong understanding of software architecture and design principles
• Experience with cloud platforms and CI/CD pipelines
• Skilled in unit testing, code reviews, and debugging
• Ability to break down complex problems and deliver practical solutions

Westpac Hei Wāhi Mahi | Working at Westpac
In addition to immersing yourself in a supportive team environment, you'll receive some great job perks and benefits including:

• 4 weeks standard holiday + 5 additional days of wellbeing leave to support you to be your best
• Additional purchased leave options up to 4 weeks per year
• Banking benefits, insurance discounts and superannuation scheme
• Growth and development – we provide opportunities for development and promote internal mobility
• Recognition - we recognise and reward our star performers
• School holiday subsidy - help you balance work and family during school holiday
• 2 Volunteer days per year

Ko mātou tēnei | Our Organisation
At Westpac, we’re working together to build a fairer and stronger New Zealand for our people, customers, and communities. For over 160 years we’ve been driven by our purpose to Create Better Futures Together.

What makes us unique are the incredible people we’re lucky enough to have walk through our doors every day. The giant ‘W’ on our building doesn’t just stand for Westpac – it says, double you. We’re a place that values, rewards and recognises individuality. Where you can be your whole self, your true self, and your best self. We’re recognised as a place where talent is developed, where passions are fuelled and where ambitions of all shapes and sizes thrive. And it all starts with you!

The people of Aotearoa, New Zealand hail from many cultures and backgrounds. At Westpac New Zealand, we draw on this enormous talent pool to curate a team rich in ability and empowered to reach its full potential. Our aim is to be brave challengers, celebrating our differences and relentlessly advocating for our customers. It starts with us – we believe that when we care deeply and do our best for our people, they’ll do their best for our customers. We encourage people from all walks of life to apply, including those who are neurodiverse, have chronic health conditions or disabilities – your attitude and passion are as important to us as your experience, qualifications and capabilities.