Engineering Practice Lead

Worker Type:

Permanent

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.

Ko mātou tēnei | This is Us  

Meet the Engineering Excellence team — a newly forming team within BNZ Technology with a clear purpose: to lift the quality, consistency and confidence of engineering across BNZ Technology.  We are building a team that brings together strong technical craft, pragmatic governance and a real focus on enabling others — and we have an exciting opportunity for an Engineering Practice Lead to help shape how engineering practices evolve at BNZ, including how we responsibly use emerging tools and practices such as AI-assisted engineering.  

 

Mō te Tūranga / About the role 

We sat down with the Engineering Excellence Enablement Manager (who you’ll report to), and they let us know the following about the role.  

This is an enterprise-wide engineering practice leadership role focussed on setting direction for engineering practices at BNZ.  As Engineering Practice Lead, you will be the custodian of engineering excellence across BNZ. Rather than owning delivery outcomes or technology platforms, your focus will be on defining and championing best practice, ensuring our teams have the standards, frameworks and guidance needed to build high-quality, resilient and sustainable software at scale. You'll work closely with our Engineering and AI product teams, championing their roadmaps and helping steer investment towards the opportunities that will deliver the most value for our engineers. This includes shaping how quality is built into delivery, and how teams responsibly use AI-assisted engineering to lift quality and productivity. 

 

The role operates primarily through influence, enablement and evidence, rather than positional authority.  

 

What are some of the responsibilities in this role? 

• Define and evolve engineering practice standards across coding, software design, testing and the SDLC, ensuring they are clear, practical and adoptable. 

• Create and maintain reference practices, patterns and guidance that provide teams with a consistent foundation for how we engineer at BNZ. 

• Champion quality engineering practices such as test automation, quality gates and CI/CD quality controls, helping teams build quality in earlier in delivery. 

• Act as the custodian of the engineer role, clarifying expectations across engineering levels and specialisations. 

• Partner with people leaders to support clear engineering career progression paths that are grounded in real engineering practice. 

• Coach and support engineering leaders and teams to uplift practice maturity through hands‑on enablement and targeted interventions. 

• Measure and report on engineering practice health and adoption across Technology, using evidence to guide where improvement effort delivers the most value. 

• Connect engineering practice to governance and assurance outcomes, reducing systemic risk through consistent, well understood expectations. 

• Partner with Engineering Product, Architecture and Security teams to ensure standards are reflected in tooling, delivery processes and control frameworks. 

• Work closely with Engineering and AI product teams to champion their roadmaps and help steer them towards the highest value opportunities for engineers. 

• Guide the responsible adoption of AI-assisted engineering tools, turning emerging practices into practical guidance for teams. 

 

Engineering career progression and capability 

A key outcome of this role is improving clarity and confidence in how engineering careers operate at BNZ. You will contribute to: 

• Clear articulation of engineering expectations across roles and levels, aligned to BNZ’s standards and ways of working. 

• Consistent signals to engineers about how they grow their craft, influence and impact over time. 

• Guidance that helps leaders have meaningful conversations about capability development, strengths and growth areas. 

• Alignment between engineering standards, training investments and career progression so learning translates into better outcomes. 

• Embedding quality as part of the core engineering craft, rather than a separate step at the end of delivery. 

• A balanced view of engineering excellence that values quality, resilience, collaboration and sustainable delivery alongside speed. 

 

What will success look like for the candidate in this role? 

Success in this role looks like clear, measurable adoption of engineering practices across Technology that enable teams to move forward faster.  Teams are using common standards and patterns, delivery expectations are more consistent, and engineering role clarity supports stronger capability development. Governance and assurance signals improve as practice maturity improves, and engineers have greater confidence in how they grow and develop at BNZ. Quality is built in earlier, automation and quality gates are trusted to support delivery, and teams see less rework and greater confidence in releases. 

 

What skills & experience would be beneficial? 

• Strong technical credibility across modern software engineering practices, including coding standards, software design, quality engineering and SDLC disciplines. 

• Experience defining or evolving engineering standards or role frameworks in a large, complex or regulated environment. 

• A pragmatic, adoption led mindset with the ability to see patterns across teams, knowing when to standardise and when to provide flexibility. 

• Proven ability to influence behaviour and support change without relying on formal authority. 

• A strong coaching orientation and the ability to build trusted relationships with engineers and engineering leaders. 

• Systems thinking and comfort working across multiple technology stacks, domains and delivery contexts. 

• Experience partnering with product teams to influence roadmaps and prioritisation using evidence and engineering insight. 

• Hands-on experience with AI-assisted engineering tools and an understanding of how to use them responsibly. 

 

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

This is an exciting opportunity to join us!  We're bold thinkers who are taking brave steps to create a company that people want to work for, and customers want to bank with. If you're ready to join a fun organisation where we are proud of our culture and how we are helping New Zealander's to 'Find their way', then show your interest by submitting your application - we can't wait to read it. 

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

Closing Date: 14 November 2026

Applications will be reviewed regularly across the advertising period, but we do reserve the right to close applications early.