- Full time (35hpw) Temporary Opportunity until September 2027
- Salary Range $167,165 -$201,105 per annum + 12% super
- Haymarket and Parramatta location with hybrid working (typically 1-2 office days per week)

About the team

Digital Services sits at the heart of the customer experience at Service NSW. We design, build and operate the digital products, platforms and shared capabilities that help millions of people and businesses access government services quickly, easily and securely.

Our multidisciplinary teams bring together product, design, engineering, delivery, cyber security, data and business professionals. We are collaborative, inclusive and outcome focused, balancing customer needs, technical excellence and sustainable delivery. We value people who are curious, challenge the status quo, take ownership and bring fresh thinking to complex problems.

About the role

The Principal Software Engineer is a strategic technical leadership role that shapes engineering direction across complex digital products, platforms and enterprise systems. You will lead technical design and delivery, guide architecture and engineering decisions, manage and grow a squad of engineers and influence standards and practices across Digital Services.

This is an opportunity to solve high impact technical challenges at scale while improving security, reliability, platform performance and developer experience. You will work closely with product, design, architecture, cyber security and delivery leaders to build secure, reusable and customer centred capabilities for Service NSW and NSW Government.

About you

You are a strategic technical leader with deep software engineering experience and a strong product mindset. You enjoy leading and growing engineers,



solving complex problems and influencing technical direction beyond your immediate team. You combine sound judgement, systems thinking and technical depth with empathy, curiosity and clear communication.

You are comfortable navigating ambiguity, balancing immediate delivery needs with long term sustainability and explaining complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences. You lead through influence, set high engineering standards and create an environment where people can learn, contribute and do their best work.

Key responsibilities

- Set technical direction and guide complex engineering and architecture decisions across teams.
- Lead and contribute to software design, development, testing, deployment and operation of digital products and platform capabilities.
- Manage, mentor and coach a squad of engineers, building capability and a culture of technical excellence and knowledge sharing.
- Define and improve engineering standards, practices and roadmaps across quality, security, reliability, resilience, performance and maintainability.
- Lead the resolution of complex technical challenges and balance short term delivery priorities with long term sustainability.
- Influence senior stakeholders and align product, engineering, architecture,



cyber security and delivery teams around a shared technical direction.
- Drive continuous improvement in operational excellence, platform performance and developer experience.
- Evaluate emerging technologies and AI enabled opportunities where they can deliver measurable customer, business or operational value.
- Support critical incidents, releases or urgent operational issues, including occasional out-of-hours work where required.

To be successful in this role you will demonstrate:

- Proven experience leading technical direction and architecture for complex products, platforms or enterprise systems.
- Deep expertise in modern software engineering practices, cloud native architectures and secure, scalable solution design.
- Experience deploying and operating containerised workloads in cloud environments such as AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform.
- Experience driving engineering quality, reliability, security and operational excellence across multiple teams.
- Proven ability to lead and grow engineers through people leadership, mentoring, coaching and technical leadership.
- Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills, with the ability to build alignment across diverse teams and business areas.
- Excellent systems thinking, problem-solving and decision-making skills in ambiguous or complex environments.
- A strong customer focus and demonstrated ability to deliver valuable, reliable software outcomes at scale.
- Solid written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical concepts clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.
- Experience leading engineering organisations, platform teams or communities of practice.

📌 Principal Software Engineer (Sydney)
🏢 Service NSW
📍 Sydney