Z has a clear purpose: Powering better journeys, today and tomorrow. As one of New Zealand’s largest transport energy companies, we have a commitment to delivering safe, secure, and reliable transport energy – with the opportunity to deliver new journeys, with new energy solutions in a changing world.  

We are proud to be the Kiwi contingent in the Ampol Group, an independent Trans-Tasman energy company, with trading offices across the globe, which are united behind our shared purpose. While many of the challenges and opportunities we face go beyond national boundaries, together we have the scale, influence, and capability to deliver for our customers, communities, and our people. 

We are currently recruiting for an experienced Upoko o te Pūhanga Raraunga Head of Data Engineering based at the Z head office Wellington, to lead the strategy, architecture and delivery of the Ampol Group enterprise-wide data engineering capability. Reporting to the General Manager, Data, Analytics and AI, this pivotal leadership role responsible for shaping how Ampol designs, builds and operates scalable, secure and high-performing data platforms that enable advanced analytics, business intelligence, and AI-driven decision making across the organisation.

Leading a high-performing team of Data Engineers across New Zealand, Australia and Singapore, you will drive modern data engineering practices, establish robust engineering standards, and ensure the Ampol Group’s data ecosystem is fit for the future—supporting both operational excellence and strategic transformation. This role will sit at the heart of Ampol’s technology and data agenda, partnering closely with architecture, cybersecurity, product teams, analytics, data science and business stakeholders to deliver trusted, high-quality data products at scale.

This is a rare opportunity to influence enterprise direction, uplift engineering maturity, and build a world-class data platform capability within a large, complex and evolving environment.

Key Responsibilities

As Head of Data Engineering, this role will be accountable for the end-to-end leadership and execution of Ampol’s data engineering function, including:

• Lead, mentor and develop a data engineering team (15+ engineers), creating a high-performance culture focused on quality, delivery excellence, innovation and continuous improvement.
• Own and drive the data engineering strategy, ensuring alignment to the Ampol Group’s broader technology strategy and business priorities.
• Design and oversee the architecture and delivery of enterprise-scale data platforms, including data lakes, data warehouses, lakehouse environments, and data integration frameworks.
• Ensure the development of robust, reusable and scalable data pipelines and orchestration frameworks that support batch and real-time data ingestion and processing.
• Establish engineering standards and best practices across CI/CD, automated testing, code quality, version control, deployment pipelines and observability.
• Drive the uplift of data governance, metadata management, lineage, and data quality frameworks, ensuring trusted and compliant enterprise data.
• Partner with Data Science and Analytics teams to ensure platforms and pipelines support AI/ML workloads, feature engineering and model operationalisation (MLOps enablement).
• Implement strong security and resilience controls across data platforms including access management, encryption, auditability, and secure data sharing.
• Lead vendor and partner engagement where required, including evaluation of new technologies and management of strategic delivery partners.
• Manage engineering priorities and delivery planning, ensuring effective resourcing, roadmap execution and value-driven outcomes across multiple initiatives.
• Ensure Ampol’s data engineering capability is future-ready through continuous evaluation and adoption of modern cloud-native tools, patterns and frameworks.

About you:

To be successful in this role, you will bring deep technical expertise, strong leadership capability and the ability to influence at enterprise level.

• Extensive experience in data engineering, with demonstrated enterprise-scale delivery experience.
• Enterprise leadership experience, including mentoring, performance management, capability uplift and workforce planning.
• Depth of experience and knowledge of modern data platform architectures, including Data Warehousing, Data Lakes and Lakehouse approaches.
• Proven expertise designing and managing high-performing ETL/ELT pipelines, data modelling frameworks and scalable integration patterns.
• Experience with cloud-based data ecosystems (e.g., AWS, Azure or GCP) and modern platform tooling.
• Strong experience with data engineering CI/CD practices, including automated testing, deployment pipelines, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and DevOps ways of working.
• Deep understanding of data governance, master data, metadata management, lineage, privacy and regulatory compliance, ideally in complex enterprise environments.
• Strong SQL and data modelling capability, with experience building reusable data products to support BI, analytics and AI/ML use cases.
• Experience implementing platform performance optimisation, monitoring, logging and reliability practices for production-grade data environments.
• Strong stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to translate technical complexity into clear business value and influence senior leaders.

Desirable:

• Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Data Science or a related discipline.
• Experience with modern data technologies such as Snowflake, Databricks, Synapse, BigQuery, Redshift, Spark, Kafka, and API-driven integration frameworks (highly desirable).

What we can offer you  

• A competitive remuneration package including short-term incentive plan, medical insurance for you and your family, enhanced employer contribution for KiwiSaver 
• Generous leave provisions including enhanced sick leave, parental leave benefits and the option to buy additional leave 
• The balance of hybrid working, enjoy some of your week at home and some in our welcoming office space 
• The opportunity to contribute and be part of a supportive team that is here to make a difference 
• A chance to build your own capability through learning from some of the industry’s most knowledgeable people who have a desire to share their insights along with access to upskilling opportunities and career development across the organisation 
• Two days a year to do Good in your Hood, though our volunteering scheme, a chance for you to help others in your community in a meaningful way to you 

The base salary range for this role is $200,000.00 to $240,000.00 per annum, plus 20% STI based on company performance, a 5% KiwiSaver employer contribution and health insurance through Southern Cross. 

Why Z? 

Z has always been a proud Kiwi company. We’re aspirational for our future, confident of our role in Aotearoa New Zealand’s success and deeply loyal to our customers, communities and people.  

At Z we focus on achieving extraordinary outcomes by setting the appropriate context, rather than by telling our people what to do. By doing this, high performing and talented people deliver better results and are more personally fulfilled. 

We care deeply for our people while pushing them to achieve their best as individuals and collectively as an organisation. Our flexible working approach and Rainbow Tick and Gender Tick accreditations - backed by our strong company values, Tū Kaha Stand Up, Tū Maia Speak Out, Tū Kotahi Side by Side - have created an open and inclusive workplace that promotes personal development and is underpinned by a desire for our people and our communities to succeed.  

One of the things we stand for at Z is Diversity & Inclusion. It is our belief that having a diverse workforce make it possible for our people to truly be themselves and deliver on our aspirations for Z.  

We’re distinctive in our approach and if you’re up for a challenge, we’d love you to be part of it. If Z sounds like a place you believe you can add value and grow your own capability, then make sure you read Our Why. This is our founding document and provides further insights in what it means to part of the Z whānau.  

If Z feels like a good match for your head and your heart, come join us for one heck of a journey! 

Please include a cover letter in your application, telling us why you’re a great fit for Z.