Senior Developer

Bank of New Zealand; Auckland; Hybrid; NZD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible working

Generous leave

Career development

Job summary

Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) is seeking a Senior Developer for its Design System Team in Auckland. You will build and evolve reusable web components and tooling that power BNZ’s digital experiences, translating design specs into robust React implementations and championing accessibility from day one.

You’ll work to improve developer experience, tooling, and documentation, while shaping the system architecture to be scalable, performant, and easy for product teams to adopt.

Qualifications

• Experience designing and building reusable UI components or libraries, ideally as part of a design system or shared frontend platform within a large application or organisation.
• Strong understanding of web platform fundamentals and ability to balance performance, accessibility, maintainability and developer experience.
• Experience building inclusive web experiences with WCAG 2.2 AA guidance.
• Experience solving frontend scale challenges like platform modernization, component migrations, or design system adoption.
• Experience automated frontend testing with Playwright or similar, including component, visual regression, end-to-end and accessibility testing.

Responsibilities

• Build and evolve reusable web components and patterns that bring BNZ's design system to life across our digital experiences.
• Partner with designers to translate design specifications, tokens, interactions, and behaviours into robust, reusable React implementations.
• Champion accessibility, usability, performance, and quality from the start of development.
• Improve the developer experience with documentation, examples, APIs, tooling and integration patterns.
• Evolve the technical architecture of the web design system, ensuring components are scalable, maintainable, testable, and easy for product teams to consume.
• Provide technical guidance through design reviews, code reviews, documentation and collaboration across BNZ engineers.
• Build and maintain automated testing approaches for components, end-to-end, visual regression and accessibility testing.
• Improve CI/CD practices and tooling to streamline contribution, testing and releases of the design system.
• Support adoption across the engineering community by collaborating with product teams and migrating to shared components and patterns.
• Keep the web design system aligned with evolving web standards and BNZ experiences.

Skills

Reusable UI components

Design system

Accessibility (WCAG 2.2 AA)

System design thinking

Cross-functional collaboration

Performance optimization

Developer experience

Tools

Playwright

Job description

Here at BNZ, it's about more than just banking. We work together in an agile, energising environment to create innovative solutions through our promise "If you can imagine a better future, let's find a way". We support wellbeing, flexible working and have a generous leave offering. There is the opportunity for growth, learning and career development. No two days are the same.

The Design System team at BNZ provides the frontend foundations behind our digital experiences. We create the standards, tooling and reusable components that help teams across the bank deliver consistent, accessible and high-quality experiences for millions of customers every year. Our mission is to turn BNZ's design language into products used by customers and colleagues every day. Working at the intersection of design and engineering, we build the shared platform that powers experiences across web, iOS and Android, helping teams move faster, raise quality and focus on solving customer problems. We also help shape frontend standards, build shared infrastructure, and make it easier for teams to create experiences that are accessible, reliable and consistent. This is an Auckland based hybrid role with three anchor days in the office and two days where you can work flexibly.

About the Role | M'ō te Tūranga

This is not a typical feature-delivery web development role. As a Senior Developer in the Design System Team, you will be responsible for building and evolving the reusable components, patterns, tooling, and technical foundations that web teams across BNZ depend on every day.

What is the team culture and environment like?

We're a collaborative and high-impact team that takes pride in our craft and our impact across BNZ's digital experiences. We work at the intersection of design and engineering, partnering closely with designers, developers and feature teams to solve problems once and make great experiences easier to build everywhere. We value collaboration, thoughtful technical decisions, and attention to detail. We believe a great design system isn't simply a component library. It should make the right thing the easy thing, give engineers and designers a shared language, and continuously improve as our products evolve.

What are some of the responsibilities of this role?

• Build and evolve reusable web components and patterns that bring BNZ's design system to life across our digital experiences.
• Partner closely with designers to translate design specifications, tokens, interactions, and behaviours into robust, reusable React implementations.
• Champion accessibility, usability, performance, and quality so that these principles are built into our components from the start rather than added later.
• Improve the developer experience of adopting and using the design system, including documentation, examples, APIs, tooling, and integration patterns.
• Help evolve the technical architecture of our web design system, ensuring components remain scalable, maintainable, testable, performant, and easy for product teams to consume.
• Provide technical guidance and constructive feedback through design discussions, code reviews, documentation, and collaboration with engineers across BNZ.
• Build and maintain automated testing approaches that give teams confidence when evolving shared components, including component, end-to-end, visual regression, and accessibility testing.
• Improve CI/CD practices and tooling to make contributing to, testing, and releasing the design system reliable and efficient.
• Support adoption across the wider engineering community by collaborating with product teams, gathering feedback, and helping teams migrate towards shared components and patterns.
• Keep our web design system aligned with the evolution of the web platform, exploring emerging standards, APIs, frameworks, and capabilities while maintaining a consistent BNZ experience.

What will success look like in this role?

• Success in this role means contributing to a strong and modern design system foundation that enables teams to create consistent, high-quality customer experiences.
• Building components and APIs that engineers enjoy using and designers can trust to faithfully represent the intended experience.
• Making accessibility the default by embedding inclusive behaviours, standards, and testing into our reusable components and tooling.
• Reducing duplication by solving common UI and interaction problems once and making those solutions reusable across BNZ's web experiences.
• Increasing confidence in evolving and releasing the design system, making changes safer and reducing the risk of regressions for consuming teams.
• Building strong relationships between design and engineering, helping both disciplines collaborate effectively and make pragmatic decisions together.
• Helping create a seamless and unified digital experience for BNZ customers across our products and channels.
• Considering the needs of wider teams by documenting decisions and building solutions that are easy to discover, adopt, maintain, and contribute to.

What specific skills and experience would be beneficial for this role?

• Experience designing and building reusable UI components or libraries, ideally as part of a design system or shared frontend platform within a large application or organisation.
• Strong understanding of web platform fundamentals and the ability to make sound technical decisions that balance performance, accessibility, maintainability, and developer experience.
• Strong accessibility knowledge and experience building inclusive web experiences, including interpreting and implementing standards such as WCAG 2.2 AA.
• Experience solving challenges at scale, such as frontend platform modernisation, component migrations, design system adoption, or testing infrastructure improvements.
• Experience building and maintaining automated frontend test suites, ideally using Playwright, with a strong understanding of component, visual regression, end-to-end, and accessibility testing approaches.
• Experience improving frontend quality and reliability through testing, automation, CI/CD practices, observability, and engineering standards.
• A systems-thinking approach, considering not only individual components but also the standards, tooling, architecture, and practices that support a healthy frontend ecosystem.
• A passion for developer experience and creating components, tools, libraries, and platforms that people enjoy using.
• Curiosity about emerging technologies, including AI-assisted development, LLMs, and agentic workflows.
• Strong communication and relationship-building skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively with designers, developers, and stakeholders from diverse backgrounds.

What attributes will this person display in order to be successful?

Excellent communication and collaboration skills to work effectively across engineering and design are essential. You will be comfortable moving between detailed technical conversations and broader discussions about customer experience, accessibility, design, and usability.

You will bring strong problem-solving skills, attention to detail, and a pragmatic approach to creating reusable solutions. You will think beyond an individual component and consider the wider ecosystem in which it operates.

You will be curious about how and why people use the components and tools you build and have a passion for improving both the customer experience and the experience of the designers and engineers creating it.

PLEASE NOTE: Applications close Monday 12 October at 11pm.

Come to the Bank of New Zealand | Nau Mai ki te Pēke o Aotearoa

"Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini" - Success is not the work of an individual, but the work of many.