Principal Engineer

A bit about us

For over 19 years, ClearPoint has been the trusted technology partner for organisations navigating complex digital transformation. We combine software engineering, AI, data and insights, cloud, and human-centred design to deliver meaningful, lasting outcomes.

We work with some of New Zealand's most impactful organisations - and we care deeply about the quality of what we build. Our Auckland head office overlooks the Viaduct (5 minutes from Britomart), with co-working access across NZ and Australia. Through innovative thinking, we strive to make a difference for ourselves, our teams, our clients and our community across New Zealand, Australia and the UK.

The ClearPoint culture

At ClearPoint, we're proud of the culture we've built - collaborative, curious, and high-performing. Our values aren't just words:

• Respect and Care for People

• Act with Integrity

• Earn and Nurture Trust

You'll work with sharp, passionate people who take ownership, raise the bar, and genuinely enjoy what they do. Based out of Auckland, you'll be part of a team that invests in your growth and makes space for you to shine.

The role

Ready to get stuck into a substantial modernisation challenge? ClearPoint is hiring a Principal Engineer on a permanent, full-time basis to lead the charge on service decomposition and architectural evolution. We're currently humming with new work, and you'll be a primary technical resource - a polyglot architect assessing complex architectures and leading the shift toward modern service-based environments across our client portfolio.

This is a senior, organisation-shaping seat. You'll set enterprise tech strategy, drive adoption of transformative technology, and define the governance, guardrails and agent communication protocols that underpin a high-performance engineering culture where AI augments how we deliver. As a strategic advisor and trusted partner to C-suite clients, you'll translate vision into actionable plans, shape client roadmaps, surface commercial opportunities from real business pain points, and be relied on for high-stakes decisions that affect ClearPoint's long-term reputation. Executive presence is the through-line - you compel change through storytelling, break down silos and facilitate cross-practice collaboration. A degree of flexibility around occasional work-related travel is also part of the picture.

• Deep expertise in modern software engineering, with a proven track record of modernising monolithic applications into service-based architectures and supporting large-scale digital transformations through the cultural and operational shifts that come with them.

• Proven expertise in client delivery management and operations - designing, building and deploying high-quality digital engineering solutions across teams and organisations.

• Advanced skills across modern back-end and front-end stacks (e.g. Java/Spring, .NET/C#, Node.js, TypeScript/React, Angular or Vue.js) with the ability to pivot across different technologies as client engagements demand.

• A solid handle on cloud-native deployment patterns - Kubernetes and containerisation across AWS, Azure or GCP - paired with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Bicep or CloudFormation).

• Hands-on experience with API design and integration patterns (REST, GraphQL, gRPC), event-driven architectures (Kafka, Service Bus, EventBridge), and building de-coupled, reusable, component-based applications.

• Strong grasp of authentication and application security fundamentals (OAuth 2.0, OIDC, secrets management, zero-trust patterns), comfort across modern data platforms (SQL, NoSQL, streaming), and a track record with observability and reliability engineering - distributed tracing, structured logging, SLOs/SLIs (OpenTelemetry, Datadog, App Insights or similar).

• Experience conducting codebase deep-dives to identify architectural patterns, anti-patterns and hidden dependencies, with working fluency in Domain-Driven Design, hexagonal/clean architecture, and event sourcing or CQRS where they earn their keep.

• Modern delivery practices - SCRUM, TDD, BDD, FDD, trunk-based development, CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Azure Pipelines, Jenkins or similar), GitOps - and familiarity with the DORA framework to measure delivery performance.

• AI and agentic coding fluency - you're using GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, Codex or similar in your day-to-day work, with a practical view on where GenAI, RAG and agentic patterns add real value in production and the wider SDLC.

• A consulting mindset - confident in discovery, scoping, estimation and pre-sales support, with strong scope-management instincts and a clear focus on "what to build" to deliver value. Skilled at translating technical depth into clear stakeholder narratives, and at collaborating with client-side engineering leads, architects and product teams to drive technical excellence.

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  Developing target service-based architectures and producing incremental modernisation roadmaps.

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  Leading technical working sessions and workshops to drive architectural decisions.

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  Providing technical rigour across all deliverables to ensure they are stakeholder-ready.

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  Mentoring engineering teams and lifting quality through design reviews, code reviews and pair programming.

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  Mentoring future leads/principals.

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  Supporting pre-sales and solutioning conversations with deep technical credibility.

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  Embedding AI tooling and agentic coding practices into how teams design, build and ship.

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  Establishing Communities of Practice.

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  Attracting top talent by defining a modern engineering culture.

What Makes an Ideal Candidate?

We're looking for a forward-thinking Principal Engineer who embodies the ClearPoint spirit - someone creative, curious, and unafraid to explore new possibilities. You'll bring a growth mindset and a natural enthusiasm for solving complex problems, thriving in an environment that values both innovation and rigour. Collaborative and confident, you work brilliantly with others, leading with clarity and calm while creating space for every voice to contribute. You're a strong people leader who motivates and supports teams, and a confident communicator across written, verbal and presentation channels - equally at ease in formal board-level settings and informal team huddles. You're committed to delivering high-quality outputs with strong attention to detail, comfortable breaking down complex requirements into manageable actions, and able to manage multiple competing priorities in high-intensity, fast-paced environments. You take real ownership of outcomes, keeping clients at the heart of what you do, and work effectively as both a team player and a self-motivated, self-managing individual. Open to learning and sharing knowledge across teams and disciplines, your values align naturally with ClearPoint's - you're a trusted expert who brings energy, quality, and insight to every challenge.