Senior Data Platform Engineer — Flexible Work & AI

NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi; New Plymouth; On-site; NZD 134,000 - 163,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary and benefits

5 weeks annual leave

Flexible working arrangements

Life, Income Protection and Critical 


Job summary

NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) is seeking a Senior Data Engineer to lead the design and delivery of enterprise data solutions that support decision-making, analytics and AI. You will shape our modern data platform and engineering practices, and coach engineers to raise the bar across the organisation.

This role balances strategic leadership with hands-on delivery across squads, delivering scalable data products and pipelines.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience designing, building and operating enterprise-scale data platforms and pipelines.
• Advanced SQL and Python skills with practical Databricks delivery.
• Ability to influence stakeholders and work across squads, programmes and technical disciplines.

Responsibilities

• Lead complex data delivery initiatives and establish engineering practices.
• Design and deliver modern data products and pipelines.
• Coach engineers and contribute to data community of practice.

Skills

Enterprise data platforms

Stakeholder influence

Data governance & security

Mentoring others

DataOps & observability

Communication skills

Analytics & AI use cases

Technical debt management

Platform sustainability

Data pipelines design

Tools

Databricks

Cloud platforms (Azure/AWS/GCP)

Job description

NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) is seeking a Senior Data Engineer to lead the design and delivery of enterprise data solutions that support decision-making, analytics and AI. You will shape our modern data platform and engineering practices, and coach engineers to raise the bar across the organisation.

This role balances strategic leadership with hands-on delivery across squads, delivering scalable data products and pipelines.