Principal Engineer

Helia, as Australia's first Lenders Mortgage Insurance (LMI) provider, with over 50 years expertise in the Australian housing market are in the process of re-inventing ourselves.

We exist to accelerate financial wellbeing through home ownership, now and for the future. Our mission is to create innovative and tailored solutions in partnership with our customers. We aim to do this efficiently and conveniently, leveraging state of the art technology and data solutions.

We are seeking an exceptional Principal Engineer (Cloud) to join our dynamic technology team. As a Principal Engineer, you'll play a crucial dual role - being an active contributor in our squad delivery while providing technical leadership and people management across the organization. This unique position offers the opportunity to shape both the technical direction and the professional growth of our teams.

TechOps follows a mix of squads and mission-based teams – we form in self-managing teams to solve key business problems. Each squad is full DevOps – they build, enhance, and operate their asset. Team members need to be 'specialist generalists' i.e. each person brings their key domain knowledge but also eager to work on other technologies or roles to ensure the squad meets its outcomes – moving to 'X or Pi shaped' teammates.

Conceptual Role Distribution

1. 20% Squad Delivery: Active participation in squad activities and delivery
2. 40% People Leadership: Coaching and developing team members
3. 20% Technical Leadership: Setting technical standards and providing guidance aligned to AWS WAF
4. 20% DevSecOps and cyber: working with our cyber team to ensure best practices adopted by our engineers.

This role offers a unique opportunity to combine technical expertise with people leadership whilst being part of an organisation's transformation journey. You'll have the chance to influence both the technical direction of our cloud (AWS) and the professional growth of our teams while maintaining hands-on involvement in delivery. We are 100% cloud or SAAS having recently completed our data centre migration therefore there is plenty of opportunities to uplift capabilities and embed AWS into our technology architecture.

Responsibilities

Technical Leadership

• Provide expert advice on technology solutions and architecture within your domain
• Define and maintain technical standards and best practices
• Guide teams in the implementation of our core technologies (Appian, AWS, Snowflake)
• Drive technical excellence and innovation
• Contribute to technical decision-making and architecture discussions

People Leadership

• Coach and mentor team members to foster their professional growth (team of 3-6 people)
• Create a collaborative and inclusive team environment
• Conduct regular 1:1s and performance reviews
• Support career development and learning opportunities
• Build and maintain strong community of practices

Squad Contribution

• Actively participate in squad delivery activities
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams
• Contribute to sprint planning and execution
• Participate in continuous improvement initiatives

Who you are

• Have strong technical expertise in AWS (Azure an advantage)
• Can build, lead, and inspire engaged teams whilst fostering a culture of excellence
• Demonstrate exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills
• Have the ability to balance technical contribution with leadership responsibilities
• Champion agile mindsets and behaviours
• Promote open communication and create psychologically safe working environments
• Drive operational excellence whilst supporting innovation
• Awareness of AI and experience of AI code generation tools
• Insurance & regulatory and compliance considerations
• Strong problem solving skills with the ability to understand needs first and solution design second
• Lead from the front - T/X/Pi-shape your skills and learn skills outside of your core skill area

CloudOps:

• Deep expertise in AWS cloud services and architecture
• Experience with resilience and observability best practices
• Understanding on FinOps
• Strong background in DevOps practices
• Experience with infrastructure as code
• Passionate on security and compliance with knowledge on architectural best practices
• Can lead WAF reviews
• Implemented AWS Bedrock and AI solutions

At Helia, we are building a team focused on opportunities: creating brighter futures for our people. When you come to work at Helia, you're joining an organisation that cares about what's important to you. Whether it's greater work-life balance, flexible working arrangements or looking after your wellbeing, we provide access to benefits that help support you both professionally and personally.

Helia is a place where you can grow and make a difference. We provide a great learning culture, where cross collaboration, training and innovation happens to embrace and embed a customer service culture. We are based in the heart of North Sydney, with spacious offices and some of the most fantastic views in Sydney

If you are interested in joining a company where you can realise your full potential and grow, we would love to hear from you

We have a diverse business community: our people, our customers and communities are reflective of this and as an organisation we are committed to continually hiring a diverse workforce. We ensure our people always feel supported and we do this by our openness to flexible work options and our commitment to inclusion, regardless of career level, life-stage, or experience.