Principal Software Engineer: AI-Driven Engineering Leader

New Zealand Transport Agency; Palmerston North; On-site; NZD 150,000 - 210,000; 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

New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) seeks a Principal Software Engineer to set technical direction, lead engineering standards and drive AI augmented engineering across frontend, backend, mobile and integration platforms.

You will act as a trusted technical advisor to the Chapter Lead, influence engineering strategy, and grow capability across the Engineering Chapter while delivering secure, high‑quality software at pace.

Qualifications

• Proven track record as a technical leader in software engineering across multiple domains.
• Experience establishing and embedding engineering standards, patterns, guardrails, Golden Paths and reusable approaches.
• Vision for AI augmented engineering with capability to experiment, prove and scale new approaches.
• Broad technical expertise across modern software engineering including backend, frontend, integration, data and cloud technologies.

Responsibilities

• Provide hands on technical leadership across complex, high impact engineering challenges.
• Lead the development and adoption of engineering standards, patterns, guardrails and reusable approaches.
• Lead the evolution of AI augmented engineering, identifying, proving and scaling approaches that improve how we design, build, test and deliver software.
• Bring systems thinking across frontend, backend, mobile and integration engineering.
• Influence software strategy, technical direction and significant engineering decisions across teams and platforms.
• Provide enterprise level technical design leadership and proportionate assurance for significant or high risk work.
• Guide detailed technical decisions, balancing quality, cost, security, resilience and long term sustainability.
• Mentor engineers from graduate through to senior level, growing technical capability and future technical leaders across the chapter.
• Build alignment across Engineering, Architecture, Security, Platforms, Product and delivery teams.

Skills

Technical leadership

Engineering standards

AI augmented engineering

Frontend, Backend, mobile, integration

DevSecOps

Security posture

Tools

Java

Spring Boot

React

REST APIs

PostgreSQL

Azure

Docker

Kubernetes

GitHub

GitHub Actions

Job description

New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) seeks a Principal Software Engineer to set technical direction, lead engineering standards and drive AI augmented engineering across frontend, backend, mobile and integration platforms.

You will act as a trusted technical advisor to the Chapter Lead, influence engineering strategy, and grow capability across the Engineering Chapter while delivering secure, high‑quality software at pace.