Principal Developer

Crescent Recruitment - Christchurch, South Island XE are growing their Christchurch engineering function and are looking for a Principal Developer to help shape the technical direction of its global payments and foreign exchange platforms. XE is a cross-border payments and currency business supporting consumers and businesses across New Zealand, Australia, the UK, Canada, and the US. More than 300 million people use XE for currency information each year, and more than 350,000 customers use XE to send money overseas. Backed by Euronet Worldwide, XE combines the scale and complexity of a global financial services group with a Christchurch-based engineering team where senior technical decisions have real visibility and impact. The role This is a senior individual contributor role for someone who wants to stay hands-on while setting technical direction across complex product and platform work. You will not be managing people. Instead, you will lead through technical judgement, influence, design review, mentoring, standards, and hands-on contribution to critical work. XE is rebuilding and modernising the platform layer behind its corporate and consumer payments products. The Christchurch team is expanding as part of a broader global technology growth plan, and this Principal Developer will play a key role in helping teams make strong technical decisions across frontend, backend, cloud, data, reliability, and platform modernisation. Full stack capability would be ideal, but XE is also open to a strong backend-focused principal-level engineer if they bring the right technical depth, leadership, and platform thinking. AI-first engineering XE is already using GitHub Copilot heavily across the development team, and AI-assisted development is becoming a core part of how engineering work is done. This role needs someone who has a clear and practical view on how AI should be used in software delivery. You should be comfortable using tools such as GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, or similar across development, testing, refactoring, documentation, and technical exploration. Just as importantly, you should be able to help other engineers use these tools well, without lowering the bar on quality, security, maintainability, or engineering discipline. What you'll be doing You'll be responsible for: Setting technical direction across complex, high-impact engineering work Anchoring ambiguous technical problems and turning them into clear, shippable plans Working across squads to improve consistency, standards, and technical decision-making Staying hands-on with production code where senior judgement is most needed Contributing across frontend, backend, services, cloud, databases, and platform modernisation Helping teams build and modernise systems that support payments, FX, onboarding, settlement, KYC/KYB, and multi-currency services Leading design reviews and raising the quality of technical decisions Mentoring and sponsoring engineers without taking on people management responsibilities Partnering with product, design, compliance, tech leads, architects, and engineering leadership Supporting production reliability, observability, incident response, and modern deployment practices Helping shape how XE adopts AI-assisted engineering across the software development lifecycle What we're looking for You will likely bring: Extensive experience building production software across the full stack Strong backend engineering capability, ideally with C#/.NET Strong frontend capability with Vue.js, React, or another modern JavaScript framework (preferred) Deep SQL and relational database fundamentals Strong system design and architecture experience Experience with service-oriented, microservices, or event-driven architecture Production experience with AWS and modern deployment practices Experience setting technical direction across teams or domains A track record of mentoring engineers and lifting engineering standards Strong communication skills, including the ability to align technical and non-technical stakeholders A practical, quality-focused approach to AI-assisted development Experience in payments, foreign exchange, banking, fintech, insurance, or another regulated environment would be valuable. The environment is complex, so experience with regulated systems, financial workflows, or high-reliability platforms would be useful. Why this role stands out A senior individual contributor role, not a people management track Complex platform and product problems with real business impact The chance to influence engineering standards across squads A global financial technology environment from Christchurch A team that is actively adopting AI-assisted development\ A role where technical judgement, mentorship, and hands-on delivery all matter Working arrangement This role is based in XE's Christchurch CBD office, with a hybrid model requiring at least three office days per week. The team is flexible and pragmatic around normal life commitments, including school drop-offs and pickups. Because XE operates globally, there may occasionally be calls with overseas teams. Benefits Health insurance for employees Discounted family health insurance Birthday day off Additional annual leave for each year of service, up to five extra days Employee share programme Staff rate on XE currency exchange Charity day Office snacks, fruit, drinks, and coffee Mental health and wellbeing resources Interested? If you are a principal-level developer who wants to stay close to the code while shaping technical direction across a global payments platform, this might just be the role for you! #J-18808-Ljbffr