Lead Software Engineer

Westpac New Zealand; New Zealand; On-site; NZD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

4 weeks holiday

Wellbeing leave

Purchased leave options

Banking benefits & super

Growth & internal mobility

Recognition program

Job summary

Westpac New Zealand is seeking a Lead Engineer in the Digital team to provide hands-on technical leadership across up to two squads, delivering high quality digital experiences and guiding engineering excellence. You will balance coding with coaching, spending about 50% of your time contributing directly to squad work and 50% enabling and mentoring your team.

You will influence architecture, drive improvements, and champion best practices, while ensuring reliability, security, and performance.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in software engineering with leadership experience.
• Experience across full stack or multi‑discipline teams.
• Strong architectural and design principles in modern tech stacks.

Responsibilities

• Provide hands‑on technical leadership across up to two squads.
• Balance coding with enabling, mentoring and guiding the team.
• Influence technical direction and champion engineering excellence.

Skills

Modern software development

Software architecture

Unit testing

Problem solving

Agile teamwork

Tools

CI/CD pipelines

Cloud platforms

Code reviews

Job description

Mō te tūranga | About the Role

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:

• Deliver outstanding digital experiences for our customers
• 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 elevateincidents 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