Principal Software Engineer

First AML; Auckland; Hybrid; NZD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Additional Annual Leave

Hybrid Role

Training Budget

Employee Shares

Parental Leave Support

Social Events

Wellbeing Programme

Coaching & Feedback

Central Office Location

Global Secondments

Job summary

First AML, Auckland-based, seeks a Principal Software Engineer to shape technical direction and scale our platform. You’ll blend deep backend expertise with strategic thinking and lead across multiple teams to deliver robust, secure services.

You’ll mentor engineers, drive architecture decisions, and collaborate with product, design and customer teams. The role emphasizes delivering high-velocity improvements while maintaining platform health in a fast-growing company.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in a senior Back End role.
• 5+ years as a technical leader in scaling teams.
• Proven track record influencing technical direction across teams.

Responsibilities

• Shape technical architecture to scale and manage debt.
• Mentor engineers and drive quality and continuous learning.
• Partner with Product, Design and Customer teams to translate problems.
• Design high-performance backend services and improve observability.

Skills

Senior Backend

Technical Leadership

Architectural Influence

People Leadership

Cross-functional Collaboration

Problem Solving

Tools

AWS ECS

PostgreSQL

GraphQL

TypeScript

React

Job description

First AML, is a one-stop solution, equipping organisations with one verification platform that is fast, frictionless and secure. We're experiencing exceptional growth (with more to come) - revenue is up 400% in the last 18 months with regulatory tailwinds blowing in our favour.

We’re proud that our product reduces the impact that money laundering has on innocent people. As a team, our role to limit criminal exploitation is what motivates us to build the very best anti money laundering technology.

Diversity and inclusion is something we are passionate about. We are continuously looking for ways to make improvements across the business and are proud of our safe and inclusive workspace, we encourage people to bring their authentic selves to work.

We are passionate about solving complex technical problems and you'll always be empowered to bring your expert knowledge to the table! At First AML, Engineers work in teams - Tūi, Kārearea, Weka, Pouakai and Dotterel. Each team includes 5 devs (including 1 Tech Lead & Product Manager). This role sees you working across all the teams where needed.

The teams work on continuous delivery where we ship numerous times throughout the day. We believe that this is the very best way to provide value to our customers. Collaboration is super important to us, this way of working creates a great team environment where it nurtures our passion of delivering an exceptional product at pace.

A bit about our Principal Software Engineer Role.

As a Principal Software Engineer, you'll play a pivotal role in shaping the technical direction and future of First AML. You will combine deep technical expertise with strategic thinking to solve complex engineering challenges, influence architecture, and help scale our platform to support our next generation of capabilities.

This is a highly collaborative, hands-on leadership role where your expertise will shape robust, scalable solutions that deliver exceptional customer outcomes. You’re curious, challenge the status quo, thrive on complex problems, and lead through influence rather than direct management.

About you:

Experience & Leadership

Ideally 10+ years in a senior Back End role, with 5+ years of experience as a technical leader within a fast paced, scaling engineering team

Respected as both a technical leader and a people leader who can build and nurture relationships at all levels

Proven track record of influencing technical direction across multiple teams and stakeholders, both internally and externally

Personal Attributes & Values

Absolute People Person:

You value the network around you and bring positive energy to the team.

Curiosity & Creativity:

You are curious and creative by nature when it comes to solving complex technical problems.

Agility:

You lean into change, thrive in the unknown, and are confident in taking calculated risks.

Execution & Drive:

You want to move at pace and go out to achieve your goals and those of First AML.

Constructive Challenger:

You are always respectful but open to challenging others and being challenged yourself.

Diversity:

You embrace and celebrate all forms of diversity.

Key Responsibilities:

Technical Strategy & Architecture:

You will shape First AML's technical architecture that scales beautifully. Rapid delivery will be balanced with platform health by managing technical debt whilst improving system reliability. You'll evaluate and adopt new technologies and approaches that improve scalability and performance.

Engineering Leadership & Mentorship:

Help drive a culture of quality, ownership, and continuous learning within our engineering team. You'll influence technical direction across our global technical teams and mentor engineers by helping them to grow high quality engineers. We'll be looking to you to resolve complex technical issues and actively evolve First AML engineering practices.

Cross-Functional Collaboration & Product Impact:

Partner with Product, Design and Customer teams to translate complex business problems into elegant technical solutions. Own product outcomes by identifying problems early, propose solutions and deliver high quality improvements efficiently. Maintain technical alignment across global time zones and maintain a shared vision of the product.

Operational Excellence:

Design and build high-performance, secure and reliable backend services and APIs. Improve system observability, monitoring and operational efficiency across the platform. Contribute to cloud infrastructure, deployment pipelines, and platform reliability initiatives. Support the continuous delivery practices and rapid deployment cycles to maintain engineering excellence.

First AML is hosted in AWS, primarily as .NET Core containers in ECS with a Postgres database. Using the standard AWS technologies such as SQS, S3, Lambda and others to support the application. GraphQL underpins both the Public and Internal APIs.

The application itself is React based written in Typescript.

Ideally, you will have good experience in 1 or more of these technologies

Don’t meet every single requirement? Studies have shown that women, non-binary and certain socio demographics are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every single qualification. At First AML we are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace, so if you’re excited about this role but your past experience doesn’t align perfectly with every qualification in the job description, we encourage you to apply.

Why Join First AML?

Our team is supportive and ambitious and we’re dedicated to building something extraordinary!

We’re all focused on giving it our best, being our best and doing our best work. To us, it’s important that we do what we say we’re going to do, we’re authentic and honest, particularly about the work needed to reach our goals. If you are looking to make a real difference, be heard, grow quickly, and contribute to a diverse, inclusive workplace that values authenticity - we’d love to chat with you.

Here are some of our perks which are underpinned by our company values ‘Pozzy Vibes’ & ‘We Reward Results’:

• Additional Annual Leave - 5 days additional leave each year for you to recharge after achieving our goals
• Hybrid Role - once you are fully onboarded you’ll be able to work from home three days a week
• Annual Training Budget - $2000 every year dedicated to your growth and professional development -it’s up to you how to spend it
• Shares - You’ll have a pathway to participate in our employee share option programme (you become an owner of First AML)
• Additional Parental Leave Payments - We match government parental leave payments and we’ll make this work best for you and your family
• Social Side - We have regular social events, from shared lunches, team outings and quiz nights
• Wellbeing Programme - From subsidised medical appointments, EAP counselling for yourself and family through to regular health and wellbeing events
• Feedback - To help you grow as much as possible, you’ll receive regular coaching and feedback
• Central Office - Located in Grey Lynn, our office is close to public transport and is surrounded by a variety of cafés, restaurants, and local hotspots.
• Global Secondments - With offices in London, Auckland and Sydney (and more to come) you’ll be given the opportunity to work abroad