Engineering Practice Lead

Are you an experienced engineering leader who enjoys building great teams as much as building great technology?

We're looking for an Engineering Practice Lead to provide leadership for our Engineering and Development practice within Technology Delivery at MAS.

This is a role for someone who can bring together technical leadership, people leadership and engineering practice. It is a permanent full-time position and can be based in our Wellington or Auckland office.

You'll help strengthen our engineering standards, capability and ways of working, while keeping our technology decisions firmly connected to the outcomes we're trying to achieve for MAS and our Members.

You'll lead and develop a team of Engineers and Developers, while working closely with our Business Analysis and Test Practice Leads to ensure our disciplines are aligned and work effectively together. Just as importantly, you'll help create an environment where people can collaborate, learn and enjoy doing great work.

What You'll Be Doing

In this role, you'll:

• Lead, coach and develop our Engineering and Development team, building capability through mentoring, feedback and shared learning
• Provide credible technical leadership and guidance across the engineering practice
• Define and embed engineering standards, processes, tooling and practical ways of working across our delivery squads
• Build consistency in how our delivery squads apply modern engineering practices, using the standards and tooling you define
• Work alongside our Business Analysis and Test Practice Leads to strengthen alignment across the delivery lifecycle
• Help shape the future capability of the team, identifying skills gaps and supporting development, workforce planning and recruitment
• Lead the adoption of AI-assisted development practices and tooling, with appropriate guardrails around quality and security
• Contribute to solution design, technical estimates and engineering decisions, working with Developers, Tech Leads and Architecture
• Support continuous improvement by identifying opportunities to simplify, standardise and improve how we deliver
• Remain close enough to the work to contribute to code, reviews and proofs of concept when needed
• Build strong relationships across Technology Delivery, Innovation & Digital and the wider business

What We're Looking For

You'll be an experienced engineering leader who is equally comfortable working with people, technology and stakeholders.

You'll Bring

• Significant software engineering experience, including technical leadership of engineering or development teams
• Experience coaching and line managing technical people and developing their capability and careers
• Strong knowledge of modern software engineering practices, including CI/CD, DevOps, automated testing, secure development, code quality and peer review
• The technical credibility to contribute to solution design, code and technical reviews when required
• Experience establishing and embedding engineering standards and ways of working across teams
• Experience with engineering tooling such as GitHub Enterprise, Jira or equivalent platforms
• Experience working across cloud and on-premise environments
• The ability to communicate technical options, risks and trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences
• A collaborative leadership style and the ability to work effectively across Engineering, Business Analysis, Test, Architecture and other technology disciplines
• Experience with Azure, .NET Core and Next.js would be advantageous, as would hands-on experience with AI-assisted development and agent-based tooling.

Above all, we're looking for someone who can balance strong engineering thinking with pragmatism, and who understands that great engineering isn't technology for technology's sake. It's about building sustainable capability that helps teams deliver better outcomes.

About MAS

We're a New Zealand owned insurance and investment company with a difference. As a mutual, we're owned by our Members and make meaningful contributions to our community through our charitable foundation.

At MAS, you'll join a Team That's

• Motivated to make a difference
• Focused on delivering high-quality outcomes for our Members
• Guided by our values: Make a difference, In it together and Own it, do it
• Supportive, inclusive and committed to helping each other succeed
• Looked after with a range of benefits including Health and Life insurance, Income Protection Insurance and 6% KiwiSaver

Applications will be reviewed as they're received, and we may progress suitable candidates before the closing date. If you're interested in joining us, we encourage you to apply as soon as possible