Jobs Companies Serko Ltd Principal Data Engineer

About this Principal Data Engineer role at Serko Ltd

Serko Ltd · Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

Serko is a cutting-edge tech platform in global business travel & expense technology. When you join Serko, you become part of a team of passionate travellers and technologists bringing people together, using the world's leading business travel marketplace. We are proud to be an equal-opportunity employer, we embrace the richness of diversity, showing up authentically to create a positive impact.

Requirements

Make an impact

Define and drive the technical strategy for our growing, global Data Engineering function, aligning with the wider data strategy to deliver outcomes across data science, agentic AI, and operational and analytical data needs. As the technical authority for data engineering, you'll set the standard for how we design, build, and evolve our modern data platform - spanning multi-cloud infrastructure across Azure and Google Cloud, data warehousing on Snowflake and BigQuery, and pipelines that serve teams across the business.

You'll work closely with Architecture, Analytics, Security, and Cloud infrastructure teams to ensure our data solutions are performant, secure, and built to scale. You'll champion best practices across data governance, observability, and engineering quality, and play a key role in shaping how we grow and mature our data engineering capability globally - guiding and mentoring data engineers across both local and international teams.

What you’ll be doing

  • Collaborate with architects and principal software engineers and provide technical expertise in selecting new or Own the technical direction of the Data Engineering function, setting standards for how data pipelines, models, and platforms are designed, built, and evolved across the business
  • Partner with Architecture, Platform, Security, and Cloud infrastructure teams to ensure data solutions are performant, secure, durable, and built to scale
  • Lead evaluation and proof-of-concept work to validate new technologies, platforms, and approaches - including emerging capabilities in data science and agentic AI
  • Drive best practices across the full data engineering lifecycle: ingestion, transformation, orchestration, data modelling, governance, observability, and security
  • Champion engineering excellence through strong CI/CD practices, code quality standards, and DevOps culture across the Data Engineering team
  • Lead the team at a technical level - involved in design decisions, code reviews, and hands-on delivery where it matters most
  • Guide and mentor data engineers locally and globally, raising the technical bar across the team
  • Translate long-term data strategy into actionable, sequenced initiatives - balancing tactical delivery with strategic progress
  • Optimise data and deployment pipelines for performance, reliability, and cost efficiency across Snowflake, BigQuery, Azure, and Google Cloud
  • Work closely with Marketing, Finance, Product, and other business teams to understand their data needs and deliver solutions that drive meaningful outcomes

What you’ll bring to the team

  • Deep expertise in modern data architecture, data modelling, and data warehousing - including Star Schema, Data Vault 2.0, and lakehouse patterns
  • Hands-on experience across multi-cloud data platforms, particularly Azure and Google Cloud, with tools such as Snowflake, BigQuery, Data Factory, and dbt
  • Strong command of dbt, SQL, and Python, with a solid understanding of CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, and DevOps practices in a data context
  • Experience with data governance, metadata management, cataloguing, and observability at scale
  • Familiarity with data science workflows and AI/ML enablement, including emerging agentic AI patterns
  • A track record of mentoring and growing engineering talent, and raising technical standards across teams
  • Demonstrated ability to influence and drive change across multiple teams and stakeholders - including at senior and executive levels
  • Strong communication skills with the ability to translate complex technical concepts for business audiences across Marketing, Finance, Product, and beyond
  • A strategic mindset balanced with a willingness to get hands-on when it counts

Benefits

At Serko, we aim to create a place where people can come and do their best work. This means you will be operating in an environment with great tools and support to enable you to perform at the highest level of your abilities, producing high-quality and delivering innovative and efficient results. Our people are fully engaged, continuously improving, and encouraged to make an impact.

Some of the benefits of working at Serko are:

  • A competitive base salary
  • KiwiSaver covered with employee contribution matched up to 3% of salary, and life insurance.
  • Health & Wellbeing: discounted Southern Cross Health Insurance, access to confidential support, guidance and counselling service, wellbeing and voluntary leave and free flu shots.
  • Focus on development: access to a learning & development platform, committed budget and opportunity for you to own your career pathways.
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About Serko Ltd

Serko is an award-winning business travel and expense software company that’s winning on a global scale. We’re already the established leader in Australasia and revolutionizing the way people do business travel in the USA and Europe – and we’re growing!

While the world of business travel is changing, we’re preparing companies for this with intelligent technology that helps them ensure the continued safety and well-being of their travelers – allowing for complex approvals where needed, giving real-time information about precautions taken by transport and accommodation suppliers, tracking and managing travel around the globe, increasing the flexibility of bookings, giving true visibility and control over costs – and we’re not stopping there. We’re backed by the biggest travel brands in the world like Booking.com and there is an exciting road ahead of us at a time where travel needs real, impactful change.

Serko is at the forefront of travel innovation and is one of the most exciting businesses to work for in the high tech sector. We now have upwards of 230 employees in 4 countries so we're still small enough for everyone to know everyone but we're big enough to take on the big boys and win. And that's the plan.

We're a diverse, close knit group with a flat structure where everyone's opinion matters and anyone can lead. We value people who have personal integrity, are adaptable, and are courageous with what they do. Serko’s people work collaboratively with energy and enthusiasm – so you’ll want to be up for the ride.

All our offices are well equipped, funky and modern and, as you'd expect, equipped with games, exceptional coffee, fresh fruit and snacks. Our environment is upbeat, energetic and fun – and we look for people to add to our culture, not just fit our culture. The work here is challenging, complex and hugely rewarding. We know how to work hard and play hard, with a really lively social scene... and we reward our people well too.

To find out more about working at Serko go to http://www.serko.com/about-serko/

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