Lead Software Engineer: Shape Tech Direction & Mentorship

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

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