Lead Engineer

About Southern Cross Health Insurance

Southern Cross is dedicated to fostering a healthier New Zealand by empowering members to live well for longer. As a New Zealand-owned, member-driven organisation, Southern Cross provides peace of mind through timely access to quality care, encourages healthier lifestyles, and leads transformative efforts within the healthcare system. The company is committed to creating an environment where its people thrive and delivering outstanding value to members.

About The Role

As a Lead Engineer, you will be a core technical contributor within a squad responsible for enhancing key customer experiences. You will actively write code daily, make critical architectural decisions, and guide the squad in delivering frequent, confident, and quality releases. This role involves hands-on leadership without direct reports, focusing on shaping technical direction and supporting fellow engineers' growth.

Responsibilities

• Develop, review, and design code for both services and user interfaces regularly as part of your daily activities.
• Make and steer technical and architectural decisions that effectively balance product delivery timelines with long-term engineering excellence.
• Ensure high engineering quality and smooth delivery processes to enable the squad to release small and reliable updates frequently.
• Maintain service reliability, observability, and maintainability, while keeping deployment pipelines fast and stable.
• Manage technical health and address debt alongside evolving delivery priorities.
• Collaborate closely with Platform teams, Architects, and Principal Engineers to apply optimal design patterns.
• Work side-by-side with Product teams to break down work effectively, manage risks, and clearly communicate technical trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders.
• Mentor developers and testers to build their independence and technical skills.
• Leverage AI responsibly to expedite development and share insights with the broader team.

Requirements

• Expertise in JavaScript/TypeScript with experience in React, Angular, or Node.js frameworks.
• Proficient with Git and GitHub workflows, Azure cloud services, and SQL databases; familiarity with .NET and C# is advantageous.
• Strong understanding of secure coding principles, identity and access management, and comprehensive testing strategies including unit, contract, component, API, and end-to-end tests.
• A solid Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) mindset focused on reliable pipelines, reusable paths over bespoke solutions, and ephemeral environments for testing.
• Experience in designing systems and UIs with embedded diagnosability and operability features.
• Hands-on knowledge of dependency management, secrets handling, and enforcing least-privilege access models.
• Skilled in building observable systems, with practical use of Service Level Objectives (SLOs), alerts, dashboards, and operational runbooks.
• Adopts a cross-functional and iterative approach to software delivery.
• Capable of pragmatic story slicing, risk evaluation, and accurate estimation.
• Leadership focused on collaboration and partnership rather than control.
• Creates an environment encouraging challenging assumptions and open discussion.

Why Join Southern Cross

Southern Cross invests in people, technology, and its mission to improve health outcomes. Joining means working alongside Product, Platform, and Architecture experts with genuine ownership over your squad’s technical direction. The organisation values a supportive culture prioritising work-life balance, professional growth, and personal wellbeing.

Employee Benefits

• Five days of wellbeing leave each year.
• Health insurance coverage for employees and their immediate family (whānau).
• Life insurance and discounts on pet and travel insurance.
• Additional parental leave benefits and financial wellbeing support.
• Access to workplace wellbeing programmes.
• Optional flexi leave for study, volunteer work, or family support.
• One paid volunteer day annually to contribute to community causes with your team.

Additional Information

This position is based in Auckland, New Zealand, and is not currently available for remote applicants outside this location. Southern Cross is committed to fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion, supporting active employee-led forums including Rainbow, Māori, Pasifika, Neurodiversity, and Whānau networks. The organisation proudly upholds the Pride Pledge, emphasizing its dedication to an inclusive workplace.