Westpac New Zealand
Westpac New Zealand
5,001 – 10,000 Employees
ConsultingInsuranceLogistics
Westpac New Zealand provides banking and financial services for personal, business, and institutional customers across New Zealand. Its offering includes everyday accounts, credit cards, home lending, KiwiSaver and other investment products, insurance, and digital banking alongside branch-based support. The organisation also develops tailored financial solutions for customers in areas such as agribusiness, tourism, retail, and health, creating opportunities for people working across banking, technology, operations, and customer-focused teams.

Principal Engineer, Cards and Payments Architecture - Westpac New Zealand

Lead the Cards domain architecture, engineering standards and platform roadmap at Westpac New Zealand. Shape secure, resilient card issuing, payments and digital wallet technology.

Description

  • Set technology strategy, target architecture and the engineering roadmap for the Cards domain
  • Provide senior technical leadership across squads, services, platforms and complex programmes
  • Convert business strategy and customer needs into technology direction, architecture decisions and engineering outcomes
  • Lead the design of secure, resilient, scalable and maintainable solutions
  • Make and influence major technical decisions while clearly communicating options, risks, trade-offs and implications
  • Own the Cards domain technical vision, target architecture and roadmap
  • Set engineering standards, architectural patterns and technical guardrails for card issuing, servicing and payments
  • Act as the senior technical escalation point for Cards domain decisions, risks and complex engineering challenges
  • Align Product, Technology, Architecture, Risk and Operations stakeholders
  • Define and govern architecture covering card lifecycle management, issuing, card products, digital wallets, authentication, servicing, configuration, scheme integrations, fraud and risk controls
  • Lead architecture and design decisions for APIs, events, integration patterns and data flows
  • Advance simplification, standardisation, reuse, automation, CI/CD, observability and testing
  • Set standards for resilience, recovery, observability and operational excellence
  • Provide technical oversight for strategic initiatives and manage risks, dependencies and non-functional requirements
  • Lead technical responses to major incidents, systemic failures and emerging technology risks
  • Reduce technical debt, legacy complexity and operational risk
  • Work with vendors and strategic technology providers to influence roadmaps and resolve complex issues
  • Build relationships with senior Technology, Product, Risk and Business stakeholders
  • Strengthen the engineering community through technical leadership, coaching, mentoring and knowledge sharing
  • Develop Lead Engineers, Senior Engineers and emerging technical leaders
  • Promote an inclusive, collaborative and high-performing engineering culture

Requirements

  • Extensive experience in software engineering, platform engineering, cloud engineering, architecture or another relevant technology discipline
  • Proven strategic technical leadership across large, complex and interconnected technology environments
  • Deep expertise in Cards, Payments, Issuing or Transaction Processing environments
  • Strong understanding of card lifecycle management, card issuing and customer servicing capabilities
  • Experience implementing, integrating or operating enterprise card management and issuing platforms
  • Ability to define technology strategy, target architecture, engineering roadmaps and long-term technical direction
  • Strong architectural capability linking business strategy, solution design, engineering execution and operational outcomes
  • Significant experience designing and delivering secure, resilient, scalable and maintainable enterprise technology solutions
  • Experience influencing engineering decisions, standards and practices across multiple teams and organisational areas
  • Strong understanding of cloud, DevOps, automation, observability, CI/CD, testing and operational resilience
  • Strong knowledge of payments ecosystems, card scheme integrations and card processing flows
  • Experience leading complex platform implementations involving multiple squads, vendors and stakeholders
  • Strong mentoring and coaching capability, including developing senior engineers and technical leaders
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills for technical and non-technical audiences
  • Deep expertise in card issuing, card lifecycle management, customer card servicing, credit and debit card products, authentication and authorisation, digital wallets, tokenisation, EMV standards, ISO8583 messaging, Mastercard and Visa ecosystems, PCI DSS, fraud controls, API-led integration, event-driven architecture, distributed systems, high availability platforms and resilience engineering
  • Preferred: experience in a large, complex enterprise or highly regulated environment
  • Preferred: experience leading large-scale Cards transformation programmes
  • Preferred: experience establishing or contributing to engineering standards, architecture frameworks, communities of practice or centres of excellence
  • Preferred: experience with configurable vendor-based platforms
  • Preferred: experience supporting digital card capabilities, wallet integrations and tokenisation services
  • Preferred: experience with AI-enabled engineering, automation or emerging technology practices
  • A relevant tertiary qualification in Engineering, Computer Science, Information Technology or a related discipline is preferred
  • A relevant industry certification is preferred

Benefits

  • An inclusive workplace that values, rewards and recognises individuality
  • Opportunities for talent development and professional growth
  • People from all backgrounds are encouraged to apply, including neurodiverse people and people with chronic health conditions or disabilities

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