Principal Platform Engineer

Kia ora! At Air New Zealand, we’re reimagining how technology powers our journey, building platforms that enable innovation, speed, and resilience at scale. Our multi-cloud strategy across AWS and Azure is the backbone of our digital transformation, helping us modernise systems, automate workflows, and deliver exceptional experiences for our customers and teams. As we continue this evolution, we’re looking for a Principal Software Engineer to take a strategic, technical-lead role within our DevOps Chapter. This is an opportunity to influence architecture, define standards, and guide the next generation of platform engineers across Air New Zealand. If you’re a seasoned engineer or technical lead, perhaps with a background in microservices or large-scale distributed systems, who thrives on solving complex technical challenges and shaping organisational direction, this is your next step. The Role You’ll Play As a Principal Platform Engineer, you will: Architect and oversee the design and implementation of platform-wide services, frameworks, and standards. Provide deep technical leadership, mentoring engineers and empowering teams to deliver secure, reliable, and high-performing systems. Influence architectural decisions and set the direction for platform engineering across multiple domains. Lead initiatives that improve platform reliability, security, scalability, and performance. Champion automation, Infrastructure as Code, observability, and continuous delivery at an organisational level. Collaborate with SREs, Platform Engineers, Security, and Product teams to align technical direction with strategic objectives. Contribute to strategic planning and long-term platform vision, ensuring our engineering ecosystem remains future-ready. What You’ll Bring 8+ years of experience in software, cloud, or platform engineering with a proven ability to design and lead complex systems. Strong background in architecture and cloud infrastructure (AWS or Azure), and deep knowledge of