Technical Strategist (Solution Architect)

Job description

### The Role: At Propellerhead, the Technical Strategist role focuses on the delivery of resilient software systems that power everything from complex infrastructure to innovative new platforms. This role works alongside our Product Strategists to shape the technical specification and platform direction for a portfolio of client products. We’re looking for someone who combines architectural insight with a strong hands-on engineering background and a genuinely AI-native way of working. You will have spent the formative part of your career as a software developer and still be confident with understanding the structure of software solutions. You'll have knowledge of emerging trends and you are agentic-first where you reach for AI to rapidly prototype new ideas and judge their value in hours, not weeks, and you are at home with directing an AI-assisted delivery pipeline. You will lead and guide the design of complex systems, and we'll depend on your extensive experience, judgement and insights to ensure that early delivery and continuous improvement is possible. You’ll be applying and reinforcing Engineering standards for programming, and shape the technical solutions our AI-assisted pipeline builds, in a lean and evolutionary manner. Importantly, you will be responsible for ensuring that client platforms align with our technical strategy. You will work closely with the Chief Technologist and Engineering Principal to apply standards, patterns, and tooling in client contexts, and provide informed input into technical strategy through client platform insights and delivery experience. This is a highly visible, client-facing role. You will represent Propellerhead in front of senior stakeholders, so a professional, confident presence and the ability to communicate and influence with clarity are essential. Propellerhead operates a hybrid working model (work from our office and from your own home). While you must be based in Auckland for this role, we warmly welcome applications from across New Zealand and internationally who are planning to relocate to Auckland. This particular role requires regular in-person office attendance. We offer a culture built on trust, continuous learning, and meaningful impact. You'll join a team that values integrity over ego, and clarity over complexity. If you're looking to contribute your insight and engineering experience to projects that matter - we would like to hear from you. ### Skills & Experience Required: - 8+ years of experience with the development of multi-tier and distributed applications. - Agentic-first: very comfortable using AI to rapidly prototype, shape solutions, and direct an AI-assisted delivery pipeline across requirements, testing and code generation. This is central to the role. - A confident, credible communicator and presenter in front of senior client stakeholders. - Our current technologies include React user interfaces, with services written in C#, so previous experience with both is essential. However we also have Typescript, Java, Go and Rust services, so you will need to show confidence in working with a variety of programming languages. - Strong communication skills must be demonstrable, with tangible examples of your skills to bridge technical solutions with business needs and present these concepts to a variety of internal and customer stakeholders. - Hands-on experience with designing solutions on Azure is essential, including active participation in building CI/CD pipelines and instrumenting for operations, is required. - Experience with streaming and messaging platforms, such as Kafka or NATS, is highly desirable. - Proven experience in leading the design of complex software applications, preferably for corporate enterprise, where solutions comprise existing services alongside custom development. - We are particularly looking for technical leaders with experience or demonstrable interest in any of the following: digital identity, verifiable credentials, open banking, AI agent authorization, edge or device-based software deployment. ### Responsibilities: - Authoring, reviewing and communicating solution architecture and specifications in collaboration with the Development teams and our core Engineering team. - Championing the technical strategy of Propellerhead as our key business differentiator, and aligning design and implementation of the solutions in your portfolio in line with that technical vision. - Building trusted relationships with key client decision-makers. You will be responsible for ensuring our teams understand technical requirements and for clearly explaining our solution design to client technologists. - You will be the go-to technical person for our client’s solutions, including facilitating any technical pre-requisites for delivery or addressing improvements from operational feedback. - Developing strategies to ensure quality measures such as speed-to-value, security, reliability, maintainability, performance and functional fit for purpose. - Specifically, you will be facilitating the evolution of our code base from C# to Rust and the ecosystem of tools, practices and services that implies, with AI central to how we handle requirements, testing and code generation.