Principal Engineer @ Contented AI

Contented

Principal Engineer

Christchurch, Canterbury, New Zealand (hybrid in Christchurch)

About the job

Contented is looking for a Principal Engineer to lead our technical vision and join our high-performing engineering team. This is a hands-on leadership role where you'll shape our technical direction while mentoring engineers and delivering exceptional work.

Location: Christchurch, New Zealand (relocation assistance available)

What You'll Do

• Own the architectural vision from infrastructure through to delivered product, making decisions that balance innovation with pragmatism

• Roll up your sleeves and contribute - this isn't a management heavy role

• Prioritise work based on business impact, helping the team focus on what matters most

• Establish engineering standards, security practices, and operational controls that scale

What We're Looking For

• 10 years of experience across the full stack - you can speak intelligently from HTTP/TLS fundamentals through to deployed applications

• Technical breadth and depth (t-shaped): deep expertise in at least one area (backend systems, security, infrastructure, etc.) where you're among the best but good understanding across all areas.

• Comfortable with AI-assisted development tools while maintaining strong foundational coding skills

• Experience with Electron apps and modern frameworks is a plus

• You understand why documentation, audit trails, and process matter, and where it doesn’t (not just code)

• You hold strong opinions loosely - open to evidence-based discussion and changing your mind

• Skilled at translating technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders

• Patient mentor who can slow down to help others grow

• Self-aware about the Dunning-Kruger curve - you express confidence probabilistically, not declaratively

• You proactively identify and solve problems before being asked

• You've worked in fast-paced environments where you had autonomy to make decisions

• You're energised by building something new, not maintaining the status quo

What We Offer

• Competitive salary ($180K-$220K)

• Relocation support for the right candidate

• Flexible hybrid work - in-office collaboration with work-from-home flexibility (2 days/week)

• Small, high-trust team where your contributions directly impact the product

• Autonomy and ownership - we value outcomes over process

Our Hiring Process

1. Initial conversation with leadership to discuss your experience and goals

2. Technical deep-dive where you'll walk us through your work and approach

3. Team interviews - multiple 30-minute sessions with engineers and product team members

We're also open to hiring pairs - if you have one or two people (engineers, product managers, UI/UX) you work exceptionally well with, let us know. We'd love to bring high-functioning teams over together.

How to Apply

We will need:

• Your CV/resume

• A brief note on what excites you about this role

• Bonus: Links to projects, writing, or anything that shows how you think

About Contented

Conversations are the heartbeat of business - where strategy is set, decisions are made, and relationships are built. Emails have Gmail. Documents have Office. Team chat has Slack. But conversations? They vanish. Lost to memory, buried in messy notes, or flattened into shallow AI recaps that strip out everything that mattered.

Contented is the operating system for business conversations. We capture insights from conversations and transform them into content and documentation using expert-designed templates. Think Canva, but for conversations.

In just over a year, we've grown to $1.4M ARR with 200+ businesses across wealth management, construction, agriculture, and government - including Synlait, Alliance Group, Craigs Investment Partners, and Apollo Projects just here in New Zealand.

The insight is simple: conversations are the most underutilised asset in business. We're building the system that captures them and transforms them into the documents needed to grow and support businesses around the world.

Our work was recently featured at the UN General Assembly, we're partnering with incredible businesses worldwide, and our lead technical advisor is a former Microsoft VP. We've just closed a significant funding round and are ready to scale our engineering team.

We're building something meaningful and want people who are excited to be part of the journey. If this sounds like you or someone you know we'd love to hear from you.