Principal Engineer – Full Stack

Jobtailor; Auckland; On-site; NZD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Jobtailor in Auckland, New Zealand, is seeking an experienced engineering leader to guide cross‑functional teams through shaping technical direction and delivering high‑quality software. You will champion hexagonal architecture, steer the modernization of a monolithic platform into well‑defined services, and define stable service contracts to enable independent deployments.

You will drive distributed systems excellence, apply AI‑assisted development practices, and mentor engineers while

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software development, senior or principal‑level experience in a large IT organisation.
• Expert level in C#/.NET and .NET Core; mentoring and design leadership.
• Proven experience with hexagonal/clean architecture and domain separation.
• Hands‑on experience decomposing monoliths into microservices with live systems.
• Strong distributed systems experience and service‑to‑service communication.
• Experience with message brokers (Azure Service Bus, RabbitMQ) in microservices.
• Web frontend knowledge (HTML, JavaScript, TypeScript, React).
• Experience with OpenAPI/Swagger and testing (Pact, contract tests).
• AI‑assisted development workflows and architecture governance.
• Cloud platforms (Azure preferred), containers, CI/CD, and infrastructure‑as‑code.
• Clear communicators capable of explaining technical decisions to non‑tech stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Lead development teams by shaping technical direction and delivering with confidence.
• Architect hexagonal architecture across the platform to keep the domain clean.
• Drive evolution from monoliths to modern, composable services with pragmatic trade‑offs.
• Define and govern integration contracts between services for independent deployment.
• Address distributed systems challenges including fault tolerance and idempotency.
• Promote AI‑accelerated SDLC with architecture fitness, contract tests, and safeguards.
• Collaborate with Product and Design to translate requirements into scoped engineering solutions.
• Capture architectural knowledge and make informed tech‑stack decisions.
• Mentor developers to raise team capability in technical and delivery skills.
• Ensure cross‑team alignment across Development, Design, and Product to drive outcomes.

Skills

C#/.NET

Python

Hexagonal architecture

Distributed systems

Monolith to microservices migration

OpenAPI/Swagger

AI-assisted SDLC

Frontend basics (HTML/JS/TS/React)

Mentoring

Stakeholder communication

Tools

Azure

RabbitMQ

Azure Service Bus

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Containerisation

OpenAPI tooling

Job description

Responsibilities

• Lead development teams through influence – shaping technical direction, creating clarity, and enabling teams to deliver consistently and with confidence.
• Architect and champion hexagonal (ports-and-adapters) architecture across the platform – separating core business logic from infrastructure concerns so the domain stays clean, testable, and adaptable as the business evolves.
• Lead the evolution of an existing monolithic architecture toward a modern, composable platform – incrementally decomposing tightly coupled capabilities into well-defined services, reducing coupling at the right pace, and laying the foundations that allow AI‑assisted development to accelerate delivery without compounding technical debt. You will make pragmatic strangler‑fig decisions, knowing when to extract, when to refactor in place, and how to keep the business running throughout.
• Define and govern integration contracts between services – designing stable APIs, lightweight messaging patterns, and clear service boundaries that allow teams to build and deploy independently without introducing hidden coupling.
• Solve real distributed systems challenges – fault tolerance, eventual consistency, idempotency, and cross‑service failure recovery – grounded in the specific demands of payroll accuracy and compliance.
• Champion system‑level thinking in an AI‑accelerated Software Development Lifecycle (A‑SDLC) where code output is significantly increased. Ensure architecture fitness tests, contract tests, and deployment safeguards are in place so services can be deployed to production independently and with confidence.
• Collaborate with Product and Design teams to translate business requirements into well‑scoped engineering solutions – balancing short‑term delivery with long‑term platform health.
• Make informed tech stack choices and capture architectural knowledge continuously, building shared understanding across the team.
• Mentor developers in both technical and delivery skills, raising the capability of the team around you.
• Lead communication and collaboration across Development, Design, and Product teams to ensure alignment and create successful outcomes for customers.

Requirements

• 10+ years in Software Development, with at least 4 years in a large IT organisation in a senior or principal‑level engineering role.
• Expert‑level proficiency in C#/.NET and .NET Core – you can lead, design, and mentor in the primary language of our platform.
• Proficiency in Python – whether for backend services, scripting, data pipelines, or tooling, Python sits comfortably in your toolkit alongside C#.
• Proven experience designing systems using hexagonal or clean architecture principles – you understand how to protect the domain from infrastructure concerns and why it matters at scale.
• Hands‑on experience evolving or decomposing monolithic systems – you have navigated the real challenges of incremental migration, maintaining live systems during transition, and making pragmatic trade‑offs between ideal architecture and delivery reality.
• Strong distributed systems experience: you have dealt with the real challenges of service‑to‑service communication, fault tolerance, eventual consistency, and cross‑service debugging – not just studied the theory.
• Experience with message brokers and async communication patterns in microservices environments (e.g. Azure Service Bus, RabbitMQ, or similar).
• Knowledge of web front‑end technologies including HTML, JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS, and React (or a comparable framework).
• Experience with spec‑first development using OpenAPI/Swagger, and a strong testing mindset spanning unit, regression, E2E, contract testing (e.g. Pact), and architecture fitness tests.
• Experience leveraging AI‑assisted development workflows to accelerate delivery, with a focus on maintaining architectural integrity, code quality, and system coherence as development velocity increases.
• Experience with cloud platforms (Azure preferred), containerisation, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure‑as‑code – you understand how architecture decisions affect deployability and operability.
• Effective presentation and communication skills – you can convey technical decisions clearly to both engineering teams and non‑technical stakeholders.

Core Competencies

Demonstrates expert‑level proficiency in C#/.NET and .NET Core, with a strong focus on hexagonal architecture and distributed systems. Capable of leading teams through complex software development challenges while ensuring architectural integrity and effective communication across stakeholders.