Senior Software Engineer (Oceanic)

About Airways:
Our people manage New Zealand's 30 million square kms of airspace, providing air traffic control, surveillance, communication, flight inspection, mapping, and airspace design services. We work with government, regulatory authorities, airlines, airports, and the general aviation community to ensure pilots, passengers and goods reach their destination - safely. At Airways, our values underpin all that we do. We value Safety, One Airways, Excellence and Success in all that we do.  

Our organisation is made up of operational business groups that are supported by governance and corporate services functions. To learn more about our people and organisational structure, check out www.airways.co.nz/about.

About the Team:
The Technology business unit is responsible for the effective delivery, management and services of all technology disciplines within the air navigation services environment – engineering design, software design and development, technology architecture and infrastructure, asset management, installation and maintenance, technical training, workload planning, maintenance program development, project management, and logistics support.

The Oceanic Control Systems team consists of a Team Leader and nine specialist software engineers who are responsible for continual development and maintenance of a number of systems, which is located on the same campus with New Zealand’s main Air Traffic Control Centre.

About the System:
Airways is one of the few Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) world-wide which supports the full engineering of its ATM systems in-house. Airways has two ATM systems with multiple components and other supporting systems covering oceanic and surveillance airspace, and multiple software teams constantly improving and enhancing these.

Air Traffic Controllers (ATCs) use an Air Traffic Management (ATM) system to control aviation traffic domestically across the land mass and immediate surrounding airspace of New Zealand. Additionally, they use another ATM system to control aviation traffic across close to 29 million square kilometres of the South Pacific Ocean, the Southern Ocean and the Tasman Sea, extending from 5 degrees south of the equator to Antarctica.

Our ATM systems are complex safety-critical distributed real-time systems, requiring 24 hrs x 365 days availability. The advanced requirement for resilience is met by numerous architectural features and by the thorough work of the software engineers supported by a robust software development process.

We have an excellent track record for the continual delivery of system upgrades, done to a high very high standard. The toolset includes Git, Gerrit, Redmine, Jenkins, Ansible, and multiple other tools.

About the Role:
A modernisation programme is underway for the Oceanic ATM system. This provides an opening for a Senior Software Engineer to join our Oceanic Control Systems development team on a full-time permanent basis at our Christchurch campus in Burnside.

This role will see you analyse, design, code, test, and document real-time life-critical software linked to the oceanic Air Traffic Management system, to required functional, performance, and quality standards.

About You:
For success you will be proactive, self-motivated, be a team player, a fast learner and an experienced problem solver.

Additionally, you will hold:

• An honours or master’s degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering, or a relevant degree with demonstratable equivalent experience
• At least 5 years’ experience working in a formal, agile software development environment
• A willingness to also work in an iterative-waterfall environment
• Expertise in C/C++, Rust, Go, Python, Bash scripting and equivalent languages
• Experience in Git/Gerrit/Redmine/Jenkins or a similar version control/review system
• Experience in high-availability and resilient cloud-native design methodologies
• Exposure to Kubernetes-based microservices construction
• A provable record of efficiently producing high quality designs, code, and documentation
• Ability to work in a dynamic business environment, influence and collaborate with people internally and externally, show resilience and agility, take ownership and focus on delivering successful business outcomes.
  

Beneficial:

•  Exposure to Rust and Go programming languages
• Experience in real-time, safety critical systems
• Experience in Qt/GTK+/X-Motif development
• Experience in SQL (Sybase, PostgreSQL, etc.)
• Exposure to Machine/Deep-Learning technologies.

About Our Offering:
Airways offers a competitive package inclusive of a solid base salary and a generous superannuation scheme with employer contributions of up to 11% of earnings (T&Cs). We also offer five (5) weeks annual leave, vast learning opportunities and career progression opportunities.

You will work on a system that is technically complex and very interesting. Additionally, you will work in close partnership with a dedicated team of controllers and pilots responsible for operational requirements and acceptance testing, and with system engineers, network engineers, and other specialist engineers supporting the multiple technologies employed.

You will see your software changes deployed regularly to the live Air Traffic Control system, for the immediate benefit of aviation traffic, air traffic controllers, and the technicians who monitor and control the system.

Airways is a great place to work, with an international reputation for innovation and success.

To Apply:
If you are ready to stretch yourself and assist Airways in building the aviation environment of the future, submit your application (CV and cover letter) via the Airways careers site or Seek.

Please note that you must be legally eligible to work in New Zealand to be considered.

This role will require the successful candidate to undergo pre-employment background checks including references, drug and alcohol screening, criminal conviction, and related checks.

Application closing date is Friday, 2 January 2026. Applications will be reviewed mid-January 2026 with interviews to commence a week to two following.

At Airways, our people are at the heart of what we do to keep NZ skies safe. We are committed to creating a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace where people feel they belong and can bring their whole self to work. We currently hold the Rainbow Tick and NQTick (neurodiversity) and are working towards Gender Tick. We make our recruitment decisions based on the best candidate for the job and therefore encourage applications from diverse candidates.