Test Automation Engineer at New Zealand Customs Service, Wellington

Mō tēnei tūranga mahi | About this role

• Are you a customer focused Test Automation Engineer who has the drive to move us forward with a shift-left automate-first approach
• Ability to work across innovative multi-agency products within the Digital Travel Portfolio
• Be a part of making genuine change to how we deliver value to our customers and users
• Flexible working + 3 extra Customs’ service leave days.

New Zealand Customs Service protects and promotes New Zealand through world-class border management. We foster belonging and equip and motivate our people to meet future challenges.

Join our Digital Travel portfolio as a Test Automation Engineer, leading automation-first testing to help product teams release safe, secure, reliable changes with greater quality and confidence.

Working across agencies, you’ll provide evidence that customer solutions meet functional and non-functional requirements and are secure, stable and fit for purpose.

Thrive in complexity and passionate about continuous improvement and genuine change? Join us! 

About this role…

Reporting to the Product Manager - NZTD and partnering with the NZTD Technical Practices Manager, you’ll embed automation-first quality across Digital Travel portfolio products.

You’ll design, build and maintain automated testing for safe, secure, frequent releases, integrating it into CI/CD pipelines for fast quality and risk feedback and greater delivery confidence. You’ll evolve testing frameworks, tools and practices to remain scalable, maintainable and future-ready.

In a collaborative, product-led team, you’ll partner with product owners, developers, business analysts, architects, operations teams and stakeholders to understand customer needs, define testable requirements and ensure fit-for-purpose solutions. Your testing insights, quality metrics and risk assessments will inform release and operational decisions. The team supports a modern cloud-based landscape using Azure Services (APIM, AKS, Cosmos DB and Service Bus), Rancher, Nginx and business-critical React applications to deliver value to travellers, border agencies and stakeholders.

You’ll provide technical leadership in test automation and modern quality engineering, coach and mentor others, build team testing capability, and help establish reusable testing patterns and a strong testing community of practice.

You’ll champion shared responsibility for quality and proactively improve products, processes and ways of working.

To succeed as a Test Automation Engineer, you'll need: 

• Experience designing, building and maintaining automated tests and frameworks in complex software delivery environments.
• Familiarity with Agile, Product Management and ITIL methodologies, and tools such as Jira, Confluence, and Selenium.
• Strong hands-on experience with modern test automation tools and practices, such as Cucumber, Selenium, Rest Assured API, Postman, K6, JMeter or equivalent technologies.
• Proven risk-based testing and strategy selection aligned with product goals, user needs, technical design and business requirements.
• Experience testing both functional and non-functional requirements, including performance, reliability, security, accessibility and operational readiness.
• Strong communication and collaboration with product owners, developers, business analysts, architects, operations teams, stakeholders and end users.

What we value:

• Being customer / user focused to determine needs versus wants
• Organising around value being delivered
• Leveraging data to make more effective decisions
• Visibility and transparency
• Focusing on delivering value earlier over increasing delivery velocity
• Empowering and enabling our people and teams
• Embracing diversity, inclusion, and belonging for our people.

Great additions to the Digital Travel team will:

• Use direct and effective communication and are collaborative in all you do
• Respectfully collaborate, compromise, and work together to achieve shared outcomes
• Do what you say you will, and actively self-evaluate to continually grow and develop
• Value honesty in others and yourself, and in turn can hear, adapt, and give constructive feedback
• Care about people’s wellbeing
• Understand that everyone has a voice and every voice counts
• Not be afraid to give things a go - even if it is unsuccessful, we have learnt something.

Requirements to apply…

To work for the New Zealand Customs Service, you must: 

• Be a New Zealand Citizen or New Zealand Permanent Resident 
• Reside in New Zealand at the time of application 
• Have resided continuously in New Zealand for the last five years* 
• Be able to obtain and maintain an organisational security clearance 
• Pass a pre-employment drug test and have a clear Police record. 

What we offer…

We offer a great workplace that fosters belonging and equips and motivates our people to meet future challenges.

Our work matters to the safety and success of New Zealand. We care about wellbeing, personal growth and job satisfaction. This is supported through: 

• A varied and collaborative work environment. 
• Opportunities for professional development and career advancement. 
• 20 days annual leave plus 3 days additional paid leave between Christmas and New Year 
• Discounted Health insurance through Southern Cross 
• Free annual flu vaccinations.  

How to apply…

Apply online with your current CV and tailored cover letter. We cannot accept applications or CVs by email.

For details, see the attached Position Description or contact Suzanne Leahy (Senior Corporate Recruitment Advisor) at Suzanne.leahy@customs.govt.nz. For technical role questions, contact Kalyn Kereopa (Product Manager NZTD) at Kalyn.kereopa@customs.govt.nz.

Applications close 11pm, Sunday 15 November 2026. 

Customs is managing recruitment independently in-house and will not engage recruitment agencies at this stage.