About the role

Senior Backend Engineer | C# / .NET | AWS | Christchurch

We’re looking for an experienced Backend Engineer to join a growing technology team working on large-scale, business-critical software.

This is a hands-on role with plenty of technical ownership. You’ll be involved across the full development lifecycle, from designing services and APIs through to deployment, production support and ongoing improvement. You’ll have the opportunity to influence technical decisions within your area, work closely with product and other technical teams, and help less experienced engineers develop their skills.

What you’ll be doing

• Design, build and maintain reliable backend services and APIs
• Take ownership of solutions from initial design through to production
• Develop and improve service-oriented and event-driven applications
• Work with relational databases and SQL to build robust data solutions
• Design integrations with internal and external systems
• Contribute to architecture and technical design decisions
• Lead technical discussions and design reviews within your area
• Support the reliability and performance of production systems
• Work across deployment, CI/CD and modern cloud development practices
• Collaborate with product, operations and other technical teams to deliver new capabilities
• Help modernise existing systems and improve development practices
• Mentor and support other engineers
• Use AI-assisted development tools throughout the software development lifecycle

What you’ll bring

We’re looking for someone with strong commercial experience building and supporting backend systems in production.

You’ll have:

• 6+ years of backend software development experience
• Strong C#/.NET experience preferred, with other object-oriented languages considered
• Strong SQL and relational database knowledge
• Experience building and maintaining automated tests
• Hands-on AWS experience in a production environment
• Experience with CI/CD and modern deployment practices
• Knowledge of AWS services such as SQS, DynamoDB, S3, ECS and Lambda
• Strong understanding of system design and software architecture
• Experience with microservices, service-oriented architecture or event-driven systems
• Experience taking ownership of production systems, including reliability and incident response
• A track record of providing technical leadership and mentoring other engineers
• Strong communication skills and the ability to work effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Experience using AI coding tools such as Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code or similar

Nice to have

• Experience working with complex financial or transactional data
• Experience with ledgers or accounting systems
• Experience leading system modernisation or migration projects
• Redis, Memcached or similar caching technologies
• Experience with Postman, Bruno or similar API testing tools
• Experience with Jira and Confluence
• Experience interviewing, onboarding or supporting the growth of other engineers

What’s on offer

• Healthcare benefits
• Birthday leave
• Additional annual leave based on tenure
• Paid volunteering day
• Office-based perks
• Wellbeing and mental health support

This is an opportunity to join a technically strong team where you’ll have genuine ownership over the systems you work on and the opportunity to influence how they are built and evolved.

Interested?
If you’re a Senior Backend Engineer looking for a hands-on role where you can take ownership of complex systems, influence technical direction and work across modern cloud technologies, apply now or reach out to Emma Howey at emma@potentia.co.nz for a confidential discussion.