Manager- Data Engineering

Manager – Data Engineering
Auckland | Permanent

About the role:

We’re searching for an experienced Manager – Data Engineering to lead the design, delivery and operation of enterprise Data Engineering and data platform capability.
This role sits at the heart of a broader Data, Insights & AI function and will ensure the organisation has secure, scalable and highly reliable data platforms and pipelines supporting analytics, reporting, insights and data-driven decision making.
You’ll be responsible for both technical direction and people leadership, establishing consistent engineering frameworks and ensuring data is ingested, transformed and made available accurately, efficiently and reliably across multiple platforms.
This isn’t simply a delivery management role. We need someone with enough technical depth to lead experienced engineers, establish standards, challenge architecture and engineering decisions, and build a high-performing Data Engineering capability.

What you’ll be responsible for:

• Define and continuously improve the enterprise Data Engineering operating model
• Establish engineering standards, frameworks and ways of working
• Lead the design, build and operation of enterprise data platforms and pipelines
• Work across cloud, on-premise and SaaS environments
• Establish scalable patterns for data ingestion, transformation, orchestration and storage
• Set standards across coding, testing, documentation and deployment
• Drive platform reliability, monitoring, alerting and proactive issue management
• Embed data quality, validation and lineage throughout engineering practices
• Oversee platform operations and FinOps
• Partner closely with Architecture, Integration, Governance and Analytics teams
• Manage Data Engineering demand, backlog, priorities and delivery capacity
• Drive automation, standardisation and reuse
• Lead and develop Data Engineering and platform capability across the team

What you must bring:

• Proven experience leading Data Engineering teams within complex, multi-system environments
• Strong understanding of modern enterprise data platforms
• Experience across cloud data platforms, data lakes and/or data warehouses
• Demonstrated experience designing and operating data platforms and data pipelines
• Strong experience with data ingestion, transformation and orchestration
• Experience establishing scalable and maintainable Data Engineering practices
• Strong understanding of platform performance, reliability and operational support
• Experience with monitoring and proactive issue resolution
• Understanding of platform FinOps
• Strong understanding of data security, privacy and governance requirements
• Experience working closely with Architecture and Integration functions
• Experience partnering effectively with Analytics and Data Governance teams
• Strong technical leadership combined with proven people leadership capability

The role leads approximately 5–7 direct reports with a further 3–6 indirect reports, so we’re looking for someone who can build capability as well as set technical direction.

This is an Auckland-based permanent opportunity. Applicants must already be based in Auckland and hold full, unrestricted New Zealand working rights.

If you’ve built or led Data Engineering capability at enterprise scale and enjoy combining technical leadership with people leadership, this is an opportunity with significant scope.