Principal Engineer / Solutions Architect (PHP, AWS, LLMs) - Contract

A bit about us

For over 19 years, ClearPoint has been the trusted technology partner for organisations navigating complex digital transformation. We combine software engineering, AI, data and insights, cloud, and human-centred design to deliver meaningful, lasting outcomes.

We work with some of New Zealand’s most impactful organisations - and we care deeply about the quality of what we build. Our Auckland head office overlooks the Viaduct (5 minutes from Britomart), with co-working access across NZ and Australia. Through innovative thinking, we strive to make a difference for ourselves, our teams, our clients and our community across New Zealand, Australia and the UK.

The ClearPoint culture

At ClearPoint, we’re proud of the culture we’ve built - collaborative, curious, and high-performing. Our values aren’t just words:

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Respect and Care for People

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Act with Integrity

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Earn and Nurture Trust

You’ll work with sharp, passionate people who take ownership, raise the bar, and genuinely enjoy what they do. Whether you’re in Auckland, Wellington, or Christchurch, you’ll be part of a team that invests in your growth and makes space for you to shine.

The Role

We are looking for a Principal Engineer to join a high-impact engagement for a ClearPoint client. You will lead the architectural analysis and design of a critical subsystem within a large-scale, high-throughput platform. Your primary mission is to solve complex scalability constraints by deconstructing a monolith into a modularised, domain-led architecture.

This is a 3-month initial contract with a strong likelihood of extension as we move from design into execution. You will work as part of the client’s leadership group to provide the blueprint for their next phase of enterprise growth. This role is Auckland-based, requiring you to be onsite at least Monday, Thursday, and Friday to foster close collaboration with the engineering leadership team.

Immediate Start: This project is ready to move into execution quickly. We are looking for a candidate who is available to start as soon as possible to lead the initial analysis and design phase.

The experience we are looking for

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Tech Stack Proficiency: Extensive experience with PHP, MySQL, and AWS environments is essential.

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Legacy Modernisation: Proven experience with evolutionary design and incremental architecture patterns such as Strangler Fig, anti-corruption layers, and shadow traffic.

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Systems Thinking: A deep ability to see through a monolith to identify coupling types, transactional boundaries, and underlying domain seams.

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Pragmatic Leadership: The ability to influence engineering leaders and create alignment while prioritising business value over technical purity.

• Data-Driven Validation: Comfort working in low-test, high-risk environments by using observability-driven validation to get legacy systems under control.

• Modern Tooling: Experience using LLMs (e.g., Claude Opus) for accelerated analysis of legacy codebases is highly appropriate for this role.

What you will be doing

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Architectural Blueprinting: Analysing the current "billing trigger" subsystem and designing a target architecture that removes database-locking constraints and supports bulk API actions

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Technical Strategy: Formalising and documenting a cohesive tech strategy to guide engineering squads and measure the success of the new design

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Observability & Analysis: Using current observability tools and adding granular metrics to capture and analyse database load and performance bottlenecks.

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Domain Modelling: Identifying bounded contexts and defining clear interfaces and event-driven boundaries between domains.

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Roadmap Development: Creating a work breakdown with T-shirt-sized milestones and transition stages to "break apart the tentacles" of the existing monolith.

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Proof of Concepts: Building and validating POCs to test domain boundaries and validate your architectural choices.

What’s next?

Sound like the opportunity you’ve been looking for? Please apply and one of our Talent team will be in touch for a confidential chat. You must be eligible to work in New Zealand to be considered for this opportunity.