Senior Developer

About BNZ and the Design System Team

At Bank of New Zealand (BNZ), we foster a collaborative and agile culture focused on innovation and growth. Our Design System team develops the frontend frameworks and reusable components that ensure consistent and accessible digital experiences across BNZ's web, iOS, and Android platforms, serving millions of customers worldwide.

We emphasize wellbeing, offer flexible work options, and encourage career advancement. This Auckland-based hybrid role requires three days in the office with two days working remotely.

Role Overview

This position is not a conventional feature-focused web development role. As a Senior Developer within the Design System team, you will architect, build, and maintain reusable web components, design patterns, tooling, and infrastructure that all BNZ web teams rely on.

Team Environment

Our team is collaborative, detailed-oriented, and impactful. We bridge design and engineering by working closely with designers and developers to create efficient, standardized solutions that enhance user experiences bank-wide.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and enhance reusable web components as part of BNZ's design system.
• Collaborate with designers to convert design specifications—including tokens and interaction models—into robust React implementations.
• Embed accessibility, usability, and performance principles into components from inception.
• Enhance developer experience through comprehensive documentation, tooling, examples, and integration methods.
• Advance the web design system's architecture to ensure scalability, maintainability, testability, and ease of use.
• Offer technical leadership via design consultations, code reviews, and cross-engineering collaboration.
• Create and sustain automated testing frameworks for components, including unit, end-to-end, visual regression, and accessibility tests.
• Improve CI/CD pipelines to streamline contribution, testing, and release processes.
• Drive adoption by partnering with product teams and assisting migration towards shared system solutions.
• Keep abreast of web platform advancements to align the design system with emerging standards and capabilities.

Success Indicators

• Delivering a modern design system foundation that supports high-quality, consistent user experiences.
• Crafting developer-friendly components and reliable API interfaces trusted by designers.
• Making accessibility a core standard through inclusive design and testing.
• Eliminating redundancy by providing reusable solutions for common UI challenges.
• Building confidence in system evolution by minimizing regression risks through robust testing.
• Fostering strong collaboration between design and engineering teams.
• Contributing to a seamless, unified digital journey for BNZ customers.
• Ensuring solutions are discoverable, maintainable, and easy to adopt across teams.

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Substantial commercial experience developing web applications using TypeScript and React, with proficiency in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, modern Web APIs, and frontend architecture.
• Previously designed and built reusable UI components or libraries, preferably within large-scale design systems or shared frontend platforms.
• In-depth understanding of web fundamentals and the ability to balance performance, accessibility, maintainability, and developer experience.
• Expertise in accessibility standards such as WCAG 2.2 AA and inclusive web practices.
• Experience managing frontend challenges at scale, such as platform modernization, component migration, system adoption, or testing improvements.
• Skilled in creating and managing automated frontend testing suites, ideally with Playwright, encompassing component, visual regression, end-to-end, and accessibility testing.
• Knowledgeable in improving frontend quality through automation, CI/CD, observability, and engineering standards.
• Systems-thinking capability focusing on standards, tools, architecture, and practices supporting a robust frontend ecosystem.
• Passionate about developer experience and crafting enjoyable tools, components, and platforms.
• Curious about emerging technologies, including AI-assisted development, large language models, and agentic workflows.
• Excellent communication and relational skills enabling effective partnership with diverse design and engineering teams.

Personal Attributes

Success in this role requires strong communication and collaboration abilities, comfortable navigating both detailed technical discussions and broader topics like user experience and accessibility. You will demonstrate problem-solving skills, attention to detail, and pragmatism when developing reusable solutions with a systems-level perspective. A genuine curiosity about user behavior and a commitment to enhancing both customer and developer experiences are essential.

Additional Information

Applications for this position close on Monday, 12 October at 11pm.

At BNZ, we believe that success is achieved collectively: "Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini" - “Success is not the work of an individual, but the work of many.”

We welcome your interest and look forward to reviewing your application.