Principal Engineer — Cloud Platforms & AI Innovation

NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi; Auckland; On-site; NZD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible working arrangements

Five weeks annual leave

Income protection

Critical illness insurance

Professional development

Collaborative culture

Job summary

NZ Transport Agency | Waka Kotahi (NZTA) is seeking two Principal Engineers to lead the Engineering Chapter and set the technical direction for critical enterprise platforms. You will influence design, delivery and reliability across Azure-based environments while mentoring teams and shaping the roadmap with Platform Leads and Product Owners.

The role blends hands-on engineering with strategic influence, emphasizing modern engineering practices, DevOps, and continuous improvement to deliver

Qualifications

• Proven experience in senior technical leadership roles
• Strong Cloud, AI, and developer platforms expertise
• A future focused vision for AI augmented engineering, with the curiousity and technical leadership to experiment, prove and scale new approaches
• Broad technical expertise across Site Reliability Engineering practices and Platform Engineering practices
• 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
• A growth mindset and commitment to continuous learning, openly sharing knowledge, challenging thinking and always looking for better ways to operate.

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

Technical leadership

Cloud technologies

Platform engineering

DevOps practices

Site Reliability Engineering

AI augmentation

Agile

Stakeholder engagement

Growth mindset

Job description

NZ Transport Agency | Waka Kotahi (NZTA) is seeking two Principal Engineers to lead the Engineering Chapter and set the technical direction for critical enterprise platforms. You will influence design, delivery and reliability across Azure-based environments while mentoring teams and shaping the roadmap with Platform Leads and Product Owners.

The role blends hands-on engineering with strategic influence, emphasizing modern engineering practices, DevOps, and continuous improvement to deliver