Lead Software Engineer — Hands-On Tech Leader

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

Benefits offered by this job

4 weeks holiday + wellbeing leave

Banking benefits & superannuation

Growth & internal mobility

Volunteer days

Job summary

Westpac New Zealand is seeking a Lead Engineer to provide hands-on technical leadership across digital squads, shaping long-term engineering direction and ensuring alignment with the business strategy. You will guide architecture, drive engineering excellence, and mentor engineers while maintaining operational readiness of owned systems.

The role balances hands-on coding with leadership, spending roughly half the time contributing to squad work and half enabling the team to improve.

Qualifications

• Professional in modern software development practices and tooling.
• Strong architecture and design principles knowledge.
• Experience with cloud platforms and CI/CD pipelines.
• Ability to lead and mentor multiple squads and engineers.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical direction across up to two squads.
• Ensure high-quality delivery and engineering excellence.
• Coach and uplift engineers, improve ways of working.
• Own end-to-end delivery of features and systems.

Skills

Software architecture

Modern software practices

Cloud platforms

CI/CD pipelines

Unit testing & debugging

Team leadership

Tools

CI/CD pipelines

Job description

Westpac New Zealand is seeking a Lead Engineer to provide hands-on technical leadership across digital squads, shaping long-term engineering direction and ensuring alignment with the business strategy. You will guide architecture, drive engineering excellence, and mentor engineers while maintaining operational readiness of owned systems.

The role balances hands-on coding with leadership, spending roughly half the time contributing to squad work and half enabling the team to improve.