Principal Engineer

About ClearPoint

ClearPoint has spent more than 19 years helping organisations handle complex digital transformation as a trusted technology partner. Its work spans software engineering, AI, data and insights, cloud, and human-centred design, all focused on delivering durable outcomes. The company supports some of New Zealand’s most influential organisations and values the quality and impact of everything it builds. The Auckland head office looks over the Viaduct and sits about 5 minutes from Britomart, with co-working access available across New Zealand and Australia. ClearPoint also aims to make a positive difference for its teams, clients, communities, and wider markets across New Zealand, Australia, and the UK.

Culture and values

The team environment is collaborative, inquisitive, and high-performing. ClearPoint’s core values are respect and care for people, acting with integrity, and earning and nurturing trust. You will work alongside motivated specialists who take ownership, pursue high standards, and enjoy the work they do. The business also invests in growth and encourages people to do their best work.

Role overview

ClearPoint is seeking a Principal Engineer on a permanent, full-time basis to lead a substantial modernisation programme. The focus of the role is service decomposition and architectural evolution, with the successful candidate acting as a primary technical authority across a portfolio of client engagements. This is a senior position with organisation-wide influence, involving enterprise technology strategy, adoption of transformative technologies, and creation of governance, guardrails, and agent communication protocols that support an AI-augmented engineering culture.

As a strategic advisor to senior client leaders, you will turn broad vision into practical execution plans, shape roadmaps, identify commercial opportunities from real business problems, and support major decisions that affect ClearPoint’s long-term reputation. Strong executive presence is essential, as the role relies on influence, clear storytelling, cross-team collaboration, and the ability to reduce silos. Some occasional work-related travel may be required.

Key responsibilities

• Create target-state service-based architectures and break large modernisation efforts into achievable roadmaps.
• Facilitate technical workshops and working sessions that guide architecture decisions.
• Apply strong technical judgement so that all outputs are ready for client and stakeholder review.
• Coach engineering teams through design reviews, code reviews, and pair programming.
• Develop future technical leaders and principal-level talent.
• Contribute to pre-sales and solution design discussions with credible technical input.
• Embed AI tools and agentic coding practices into how teams design, build, and release software.
• Set up and grow Communities of Practice.
• Help attract strong engineering talent by shaping a modern technical culture.

Experience and technical background

The ideal candidate will have most, if not all, of the following:

• Deep software engineering expertise, including experience transforming monolithic systems into service-oriented architectures and supporting large-scale digital change.
• Strong delivery and operational leadership in client environments, including designing, building, and deploying digital engineering solutions across teams and organisations.
• Advanced capability across modern back-end and front-end technologies such as Java/Spring, .NET/C#, Node.js, TypeScript/React, Angular, or Vue.js, with the flexibility to move between stacks as needed.
• Practical knowledge of cloud-native deployment, including Kubernetes, containerisation, AWS, Azure, or GCP, along with infrastructure as code such as Terraform, Bicep, or CloudFormation.
• Hands-on experience with APIs and integration patterns such as REST, GraphQL, and gRPC, plus event-driven systems using Kafka, Service Bus, or EventBridge.
• Solid understanding of application security and authentication, including OAuth 2.0, OIDC, secrets management, and zero-trust approaches, together with experience in SQL, NoSQL, streaming data, and observability practices such as distributed tracing, structured logging, and SLOs/SLIs.
• Ability to analyse codebases to uncover architectural patterns, anti-patterns, and hidden dependencies, with working knowledge of Domain-Driven Design, hexagonal or clean architecture, and event sourcing or CQRS where useful.
• Comfort with modern delivery methods including SCRUM, TDD, BDD, FDD, trunk-based development, CI/CD pipelines, GitOps, and the DORA framework.
• Regular use of AI and agentic development tools such as GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex, plus a practical understanding of where GenAI and RAG-based approaches create real production value.
• A consulting mindset with strong capability in discovery, scoping, estimation, and pre-sales support, along with the ability to translate technical depth into clear stakeholder messages and work effectively with client engineering leaders, architects, and product teams.

What success in the role looks like

• Building modernisation plans and architectural roadmaps that drive measurable progress.
• Leading design-focused sessions that result in clear technical direction.
• Ensuring delivery artefacts are polished, accurate, and ready for senior stakeholders.
• Improving team quality and capability through mentoring and hands-on technical guidance.
• Helping shape ClearPoint’s engineering practice and future technical leadership.

What makes a strong candidate

ClearPoint is looking for a forward-thinking principal-level engineer who is creative, curious, and eager to explore better ways of solving hard problems. You should bring a growth mindset, enjoy working through complexity, and balance innovation with disciplined execution. The role suits someone who collaborates well, communicates clearly, stays calm under pressure, and creates an environment where different viewpoints are heard. Strong people leadership, attention to detail, the ability to prioritise across multiple competing demands, and a strong sense of ownership are all important. You should be comfortable working in fast-moving, high-intensity settings while keeping the client’s needs front and centre.

Benefits and perks

• Competitive pay.
• Access to modern tools and a cutting-edge technology environment.
• Opportunity to work with leading clients on complex and award-winning work.
• Career growth and professional development support.
• Collaborative, innovative team culture.
• Health insurance.
• Subsidised gym memberships.
• Access to massages.
• Dog-friendly and kid-friendly head office.
• Drinks, snacks, and barista coffee.
• Opportunities to join team sports and other events.
• Flexible or remote working arrangements where suitable.
• BYOD policy, with a yearly allowance and phone allowance for permanent staff.
• Annual training and professional development budget for books, courses, and conferences.
• Access to partner resources and learning from AWS, Microsoft, Okta, Snowflake, and Salesforce.
• Lunch-and-learn sessions, engineering festivals, and tech community meet-ups.

Other information

This is a permanent full-time position based in Auckland, New Zealand, with remote work arrangements available where appropriate. Applicants should be based in New Zealand and legally eligible to work there. ClearPoint uses AI tools in parts of its hiring process to support tasks such as reviewing applications and analysing resumes, but human judgement remains central and final hiring decisions are made by people. Candidates interested in the role were asked to send a CV and a short introduction to the hiring contact listed in the source.