Principal Engineer — Cloud & AI Platform Leader

NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi; Palmerston North; On-site; NZD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible working arrangements

Five weeks annual leave

Income Protection and Critical Illness

Professional development and career成长

Collaborative and inclusive culture

Job summary

NZ Transport Agency | Waka Kotahi is seeking two Principal Engineers to lead our Engineering Chapter, driving technical direction across enterprise platforms and shaping resilient, scalable digital services in a primarily Azure public cloud environment.

You will influence tech roadmaps, mentor engineers, and collaborate with Platform Leads, Product Owners and delivery teams to foster modern engineering practices, DevOps, and continuous improvement while expanding NZTA's technical capability.

Qualifications

• Proven experience in senior technical leadership roles.
• Strong Cloud, AI, and developer platforms expertise.
• Broad technical expertise across Site Reliability Engineering practices and Platform Engineering.
• Strong knowledge of Agile, DevOps, and continuous improvement practices.
• Excellent stakeholder engagement, communication, and collaboration skills and the ability to build influence without relying on authority.

Responsibilities

• Provide hands-on technical leadership across complex, high impact engineering challenges.
• Drive platform reliability across cloud environments.
• Significantly influence internal developer platforms and developer experience.
• Lead the evolution of AI augmented engineering by identifying, proving and scaling approaches that improve how we design, build, test and deliver systems and platforms.
• Champion Agile, DevOps, and continuous improvement practices.
• Influence technology roadmaps and engineering direction.
• Mentor engineers and strengthen technical capability.
• Collaborate across teams to deliver secure, scalable services.

Skills

Senior tech leadership

Cloud & AI

Platform engineering

SRE practices

Agile & DevOps

Job description

NZ Transport Agency | Waka Kotahi is seeking two Principal Engineers to lead our Engineering Chapter, driving technical direction across enterprise platforms and shaping resilient, scalable digital services in a primarily Azure public cloud environment.

You will influence tech roadmaps, mentor engineers, and collaborate with Platform Leads, Product Owners and delivery teams to foster modern engineering practices, DevOps, and continuous improvement while expanding NZTA's technical capability.