Spark NZ
As New Zealand's largest telecommunications and digital services company, Spark's purpose is to help all of New Zealand win big in a digital world. We provide mobile, broadband, and digital services to millions of New Zealanders and thousands of New Zealand businesses.
We operate in an exciting and constantly evolving industry, where the pace of change brings new and unique challenges every day, so we operate using Agile ways of working to allow us to meet the fast-changing needs of our customers. Agile replaces the traditional hierarchical organisational structure to produce a transparent, collaborative environment with highly productive teams who are empowered to deliver better outcomes for our customers, communities, and all of New Zealand.
About the Role:
A note on the title: at Spark, “Tech DevOps Lead” is our senior engineering lead title. This one is mobile — hands-on React Native, leading the team, and owning app health in production.
Reporting to the Digital Chapter Lead, you’ll share leadership of the mobile space with a peer Tech DevOps Lead — together leading development across Spark and Skinny, delivering the self-service experiences customers rely on every day. This is a hands-on role using React Native, Expo, and TypeScript — where you’ll champion modern mobile engineering practices including performance, OTA delivery, accessibility, and design system adoption.
Day to day you will be involved in:
- Lead mobile app development — Architect, build, and ship production-grade mobile apps. Partner with your peer lead on shared standards, and own app store releases for your area.
- Own platform health — Crash monitoring, performance tracking, incident response, and production stability.
- Set the engineering bar — Clear patterns, reusable components, Jest-based testing, and security practices appropriate for a telco.
- Lead with AI, lead with judgement — Empower the team to use AI coding agents as everyday tools, with ownership, critical review, and accountability for what ships.
- Lead and grow the team — Mentor mobile developers through code reviews, pairing, and technical direction, including the onshore and offshore partners who deliver alongside you.
- Partner across squads and disciplines — Work with designers, product owners, architects, and Web/DevOps Leads to unblock delivery and align on shared standards and tooling.
- Contribute to technical direction — Work with the Chapter Lead and peer leads to shape the roadmap, manage technical risk, and evolve the mobile space over time.
What experience you'll bring?
You’ll bring 7+ years of professional software development experience, with at least 4 years hands-on with React Native and TypeScript in production, and a proven track record shipping and operating consumer mobile apps at scale. You’ll have working knowledge of iOS and Android — enough to debug native crashes, use native modules, and manage app store releases (Swift or Kotlin is a bonus, not a must) — along with experience with Expo (OTA updates), Node.js, and REST or GraphQL APIs. You’ll have experience mentoring and guiding developers, including onshore and offshore partner engineers, and be comfortable with production ownership and AI-assisted development tools. Familiarity with mobile performance, design systems, accessibility, and CI/CD rounds it out.
WHY CHOOSE US:
Diversity and Inclusion: Te Kanorau me te Whakawhāiti mai
At Spark, we are constantly looking for ways to build a more inclusive culture. Our vision is for diversity and inclusion to be "how things are done at Spark", embedded into our day-to-day activities, standards, and business practices. We want you to feel totally comfortable bringing your whole self to work regardless of your gender, ethnicity, orientation, age, or ability.
Sustainability: Toitū
Sustainability is a key focus for us. We are dedicated to supporting Aotearoa New Zealand's recovery and economic transformation. The principle of equity is at the very heart of our approach, and we remain committed to working in partnership to make a positive contribution to digital equity in line with our focus on Diversity and Inclusion.
Benefits: Awhina
Our people matter and we make sure we look after them. As a valued employee of Spark, we've got our people covered with a range of leading benefits including:
- Wellbeing - Comprehensive medical insurance, life and income protection. Access to wellbeing coaches, EAP and in-house Specialist Clinical support through our leading Mahi Tahi Wellness programme.
- Hybrid ways of working - for most teams at Spark this means being in the office for 4 days a week, and 1 day being flexible.
- Leave - in addition to four weeks annual leave, we offer purchased leave, enhanced parental leave support and study leave.
- Spark Credit – we provide permanent employees with $120 monthly Spark credit to use on any of our amazing products
- Spark Share scheme – periodically we offer the opportunity to buy into our share scheme.
- Career development – access to an internal marketplace that connects employees with experiential, on the job learning across Spark.
Due to the nature and urgency of this role, we are only considering applicants that are based in New Zealand with permanent residency, citizenship, or a valid work visa (with at least 18 months remaining).
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