Principal Engineer (AWS, Kafka) — Melbourne, Melbourne Region

ABOUT THE ROLE We are seeking a highly skilled and motivated Principal Engineer to join our team and play a key role in building new offerings within our Technology & Rewards Program . This role is crucial for extending and maintaining mission-critical applications while collaborating with a talented group of engineers to design and deliver new capabilities . KEY RESPONSIBILITIES Champion software quality, integrity, extensibility, maintainability, and reliability by implementing and promoting best engineering practices . Design and implement event streaming architectures using Kafka (Amazon MSK), Kinesis, and EventBridge. Take ownership of DevOps self-service, infrastructure support, and AWS operations . Lead the development and maintenance of CI/CD pipelines and automated testing . Deliver applications and platforms that align with business outcomes. Mentor and coach junior and mid-level engineers on system design, technical expertise, and programming knowledge . Oversee the strategic roadmap of projects , managing support, maintenance, BAU, and cost controls within AWS. Assess, analyze, plan, and design applications to ensure scalability and high performance . Collaborate with the Tech Lead to refine roadmaps and stakeholder engagement . Ensure solutions are well-documented, supported, and transitioned into BAU . Lead technical solutions to business challenges , working closely with cross-functional teams. Drive and enforce technical governance in collaboration with Lead Engineers . Present to Architecture teams, Councils, and senior leadership to secure sign-offs on designs and solutions. REQUIREMENTS: Advanced in technologies such as Java (Java 8) , including Spring/Spring Boot and/or Node and Typescript Strong experience with event-driven architecture and messaging frameworks like Kafka (Amazon MSK), Kinesis, and EventBridge . Deep proficiency in AWS services , including VPC, EC2, ECS, SG, CloudFormation, CloudWatch, and RDS . Hands-on experience in designing and developing highly available, scalable, and reliable AWS-based systems . Strong background in microservices architecture and cloud-native development . Enterprise-level experience in application development, JUnit, and test automation . Proficiency in CI/CD tools such as Docker, Jenkins, and Ansible . Strong experience with databases like DynamoDB, MySQL, and other relational and NoSQL databases . Experience with Node.js and TypeScript for backend API development and integration. A deep understanding of best practices for API development, event-driven workflows, and cloud-native services . Desirable: Experience presenting architectural solutions to Architecture teams, Councils, or senior leadership to secure sign-offs.