Data Engineer

Company Description

At WM New Zealand, we're more than New Zealand's leading resource recovery, recycling, and waste management company. We're helping create a more sustainable future by leveraging technology, data, and innovation to drive meaningful business outcomes.

Job Description

As our data landscape continues to evolve, we're looking for a Data Engineer to play a key role in designing, building, and optimising the data products and platforms that underpin our business.

This is an exciting opportunity for someone who enjoys solving complex problems, building scalable data solutions, and influencing how data is used across a large, operational organisation.

About the role

As a Data Engineer, you'll lead the design, development, and optimisation of data products and infrastructure across the organisation. You'll work closely with stakeholders, analysts, and our digital solutions team to deliver reliable, scalable, and high-performing data solutions that enable better decision-making and business performance.

This role offers a balance of technical, hands-on engineering, and strategic contribution, making it ideal for someone who enjoys both building and influencing.

What you'll be responsible for

• Designing, developing, and maintaining scalable data pipelines and data products
• Leading the implementation and optimisation of modern data architectures and platforms
• Ensuring data is reliable, secure, accessible, and fit for business use
• Collaborating with stakeholders to understand requirements and translate them into technical solutions
• Supporting and mentoring junior Data Engineers and contributing to technical capability across the team
• Driving continuous improvement in data engineering practices, standards, and governance
• Working closely with analytics, reporting, and AI teams to enable advanced insights and innovation
• Monitoring and optimising data performance, quality, and availability across systems
• Contributing to strategic data initiatives that support business growth and transformation

Qualifications

About you

You’re an experienced Data Engineer who enjoys building scalable, reusable data solutions that power AI-driven and agentic products. You like partnering with stakeholders, solving complex problems, and keeping data platforms healthy and reliable in production.

You’ll bring:

• At least 2 years’ experience building and operating data platforms in cloud environments such as Azure, AWS or GCP
• Hands-on experience designing and building semantic views or semantic layers that give agentic and AI products consistent, well-governed access to data (e.g. Snowflake Semantic Views, Cortex Analyst, dbt Semantic Layer, or equivalent)
• Strong expertise in building scalable, reusable data pipelines and modular data models that others can easily build on
• Hands-on experience with technologies such as Snowflake, SQL, dbt, Data Factory, Databricks, or equivalent
• A strong understanding of data modelling, ETL/ELT processes and cloud data architecture principles
• Proven operational experience monitoring platform health, troubleshooting pipeline and platform failures, carrying out root cause analysis, and putting fixes in place that prevent issues from recurring
• Familiarity with observability and alerting tools, CI/CD practices, and infrastructure as code (e.g. Terraform)
• Experience optimising data performance, cost, quality and governance
• The ability to communicate effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• A collaborative mindset and a passion for continuous improvement
• Experience mentoring or providing technical guidance to other engineers would be highly regarded

Additional Information

Why join WM New Zealand? 

• Opportunity to work on meaningful projects that deliver real business impact
• Ongoing learning, development, and career progression opportunities
• Flexible working arrangements that support work-life balance
• Onsite café and parking for everyday convenience

At WM, we invest in our people - because they are our greatest asset.

Ready to make an impact?

If you're excited about building modern data solutions and want to be part of a team shaping the future of data at WM New Zealand, we'd love to hear from you.

Apply today. Applications will be reviewed as they are received, so we encourage early applications.

WM New Zealand is an equal opportunity employer committed to maintaining a safe and drug and alcohol-free workplace.

Applicants must be based in New Zealand and hold current NZ work rights (citizenship, residency, or valid work visa).