Data Platform Engineer at Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora

Apply for Data Platform Engineer at Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora in NZ. This Full time on site position offers great opportunities for career growth. Permanent, full-time position based anywhere in New Zealand. Help shape and strengthen Health New Zealand's modern Corporate Data Platform, supporting data services that underpin critical decisions across the organisation. Design, build and optimise secure, scalable and reliable data platforms, pipelines and integration services. Bring modern data engineering practices to a complex organisation, using cloud technologies, automation and continuous improvement to enable trusted data. Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora is the country's largest employer, delivering universal public healthcare to 5 million New Zealanders. We provide essential hospital, specialist, and community health services across 80+ locations - from large urban centres to rural towns and remote communities. Our goal is to improve health outcomes for all New Zealanders by delivering equitable, accessible and innovative care.

About the Role

As the Data Platform Engineer, you'll play a key role in designing, building, maintaining and continuously improving Health New Zealand's modern data platforms and engineering capabilities. You'll work across the Corporate Data Platform to ensure our data services are secure, scalable, reliable and high-performing, supporting operational, financial and strategic decision-making across Health New Zealand. A key focus of the role will be developing and supporting cloud-based data platforms, data pipelines, integration services and platform automation. You'll apply modern engineering practices including DevOps, DataOps, CI/CD and Infrastructure as Code to improve the reliability, consistency and efficiency of our data environment. You'll work closely with Data Engineers, Analytics Developers, Data Architects, analysts, data scientists, product owners, stakeholders and technology teams to design and deliver fit-for-purpose solutions. You'll help translate business and technical requirements into robust, scalable solutions while ensuring alignment with enterprise architecture, security, privacy and data governance standards. The role will also contribute to platform monitoring, troubleshooting and operational excellence, identifying opportunities to improve performance, automation, resilience and reliability. You'll take a proactive approach to resolving issues, managing technical debt and identifying opportunities to continuously improve the Corporate Data Platform. This is an opportunity to work on enterprise-scale data capabilities that support better use of data across New Zealand's health system, while helping shape the technology and engineering practices that will support Health New Zealand into the future.

About you

• A relevant tertiary qualification in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, Data Engineering or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• Demonstrated experience developing and supporting enterprise-scale data platforms and data pipelines.
• Experience working with cloud technologies such as Snowflake, Azure, AWS or Google Cloud Platform.
• Strong experience with SQL and data modelling concepts.
• Experience with CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, DevOps or DataOps practices.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to troubleshoot complex technical issues and identify practical solutions.
• Experience designing and delivering secure, scalable and reliable technical solutions.
• Strong communication and stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to explain technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Experience with Snowflake, dbt, GitHub, Azure DevOps, Jira, PowerShell, Bash or comparable technologies such as Databricks, Synapse or Fabric would be advantageous.
• Experience working with healthcare information systems or healthcare datasets, AI tools and implementation, ERP systems such as Oracle Fusion, or within a large and complex public sector organisation would also be valuable.
• An understanding of how to apply Te Tiriti o Waitangi in practice would be welcomed.
• You’ll be curious, adaptable and committed to continuous improvement, with the ability to balance operational support with longer-term platform development.
• You’ll build trusted relationships across multidisciplinary teams and bring a strong sense of accountability, professionalism and integrity to your work.

Working for Health New Zealand Health New Zealand | Te Whatu Ora is dedicated to ensuring excellent healthcare for the people of New Zealand. We embrace a workforce that is diverse and inclusive so that we are better positioned to understand and service our community. We welcome applications from our diverse Māori, Pacific, disabled, and rainbow communities.

For further information, please contact Nicole Rickard on [email protected].