Principal Software Engineer Trade Me

Abundant Code; Wellington; On-site; NZD 180,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible work options

Parental leave policies

10 learning & development time

Wellness resources

Strong social culture

AI skilling

Job summary

Trade Me in Wellington, New Zealand, is seeking a Principal Software Engineer to drive architectural strategy and technical roadmaps. You will partner with engineering leadership, act as an internal R&D consultant for product squads, and mentor senior engineers to elevate technical capability.

Reporting to the Architecture Team Manager, you will shape the roadmap, manage technical debt, and ensure the engineering craft keeps pace with global industry standards.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with significant time at a Principal or Staff level in high-demand environments.
• Deep, practical experience with development stack, ecosystem, tooling, and system design optimization.
• Proven track record defining and delivering architectural roadmaps and technical strategies.

Responsibilities

• Own and formulate technical platform strategies and roadmaps in partnership with engineering leadership.
• Act as an internal R&D consultant for product squads, providing expertise on complex technical challenges.
• Set the gold standard for engineering craft, promoting modularization, advanced CI/CD, and AI adoption.
• Proactively identify, prioritize, and manage technical debt to ensure robust, performant foundations.
• Provide architectural stewardship and mentor senior engineers to lift collective technical capability.

Job description

Principal Software Engineer Overview

Company Name: Trade Me

Job Role: Principal Software Engineer

Qualifications: Not specified

Category: I

Job Type: Full Time

Location: Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand

At Trade Me, we're about connecting Kiwi to create the life they want. Whether it's the big things like finding a home, a job, a car or growing their business, or the smaller things, like finding that right bedside table or parting ways with some old stuff. At Trade Me our vision is to be the place where Kiwi look first.

This is a pivotal role designed to provide real technical "depth" to our software development and architecture disciplines. Reporting to the Architecture Team Manager, you will act as the primary authority for some of our biggest technical challenges. You will complement our existing architects to ensure Trade Me has a balanced, world-class technical strategy. As an internal R&D thought leader and consultant, you will shape the roadmap, manage technical debt, and ensure our engineering craft keeps pace with global industry standards.

Here is what you can expect from this role

• Own and formulate technical platform strategies and roadmaps in partnership with engineering leadership.
• Act as an internal R&D consultant for product squads, providing expertise on complex technical challenges.
• Set the gold standard for engineering craft, promoting modularization, advanced CI/CD, and AI adoption.
• Proactively identify, prioritize, and manage technical debt to ensure robust, performant foundations.
• Provide architectural stewardship and mentor senior engineers to lift collective technical capability.

What you will bring to our team

• 10+ years of software engineering experience, with significant time at a Principal or Staff level in high-demand environments.
• Deep, practical experience with your development stack, ecosystem, tooling, and system design optimization.
• Proven track record defining and delivering architectural roadmaps and technical strategies
• Visionary technical leadership with strong awareness of emerging tech trends and AI.
• Consultative, pragmatic mindset balancing long-term stability with commercial priorities.

You’ll have the best time working at Trade Me, and this is why

• Flexible work options: We support various work arrangements for this role, including part-time work, job sharing, and flexible working hours to help you achieve a healthy work-life balance.
• Invest in your family: We offer comprehensive parental leave policies to support parents.
• Dedicated 10 Learning & Development time: Enjoy 10% dedicated time for ongoing learning and skill enhancement.
• Wellness resources: We prioritize your physical and mental wellbeing, providing access to various resources.
• Strong social culture: Company-paid shared lunches, regular social events, annual awards, employee networking groups, social sports clubs and more.
• AI & Tech: We live and breathe AI in our daily tasks. We value curiosity and an open mind towards new tech, offering dedicated AI skilling to help you grow and thrive in a fast-changing landscape.

Our Commitment to Diversity: We’re firm believers that diversity fuels progress. To tackle existing inequality for women in technical leadership, we will be applying a preference for women when filling this role. The successful candidate will of course need to meet the core criteria for the role, and Trade Me will also take a broader perspective weighing up skills and experience alongside other factors such as future potential, diversity and the unique contribution you could make at Trade Me.

Trade Me is an INZ accredited employer. We truly value diversity and embrace a flexible workplace where people are encouraged to achieve their potential.

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