Senior Data Quality Engineer

LIC is a farmer-owned co-operative that’s been supporting herd improvement in New Zealand’s dairy sector for more than 115 years. We’re focused on providing superior genetics, reliable testing and diagnostics, integrated on-farm software, and great customer service, all designed to help farmers make smarter decisions every day.

As a proud generational co-operative, we’re here for farmers, their families, and rural communities, not just for today, but for the future. And none of it happens without our people. Whether on farm, in the lab, or behind the scenes, every one of us plays a part in helping New Zealand farmers succeed.

Your Role:

As our Senior Data Quality Engineer, you'll shape how data quality is designed, delivered, and embedded across LIC's data platform.

Working across platform and domain teams, you'll establish scalable frameworks, standards, and best practices that enable Data Quality as a Service. You'll help drive the shift from manual, batch-based testing to automated, event-driven quality controls, ensuring our data products are trusted, reliable, and fit for purpose.

This is a highly influential role that combines technical leadership with hands-on delivery. You'll champion Data as a Product mindset, develop reusable quality patterns, and help ensure our platform continues to scale as the business grows.

Your Key Focus:

Data Quality Strategy

You'll define and evolve LIC's approach to data quality, creating reusable frameworks, standards, and quality measures that enable teams to deliver trusted data products at scale.

Data Governance & Security

You'll work alongside governance, architecture, and security stakeholders to ensure data quality practices align with privacy, security, compliance, and data protection requirements.

Engineering, Reliability & Observability

You'll lead the development of testing, monitoring, and observability capabilities that provide visibility into data health, improve platform reliability, and support proactive issue resolution.

Leadership & Influence

You'll champion data quality across the organisation, providing technical leadership, coaching, and guidance that helps teams adopt consistent practices and build quality into their solutions from day one.

Operational Excellence

You'll promote automation, continuous improvement, and modern engineering practices that strengthen reliability, improve efficiency, and enable teams to deliver with confidence.

Responsible Use of AI

You'll contribute to the safe and practical adoption of AI-enabled tooling, helping teams leverage emerging capabilities while maintaining appropriate controls around quality, privacy, and security.

What You'll Bring...

Essential

• Relevant tertiary qualifications in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Data Engineering, or a related discipline, or equivalent industry experience.

• Proven experience designing and implementing automated data quality and testing solutions at scale.

• Strong understanding of data modelling, schemas, and modern data platform design principles.

• Hands-on experience with event-driven architectures and streaming technologies such as Kafka, Flink, or similar.

• Expertise with automated testing frameworks and data quality tools such as Great Expectations, Soda, dbt Tests, or pytest.

• Experience developing data observability, monitoring, and reliability solutions.

• Working knowledge of Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) and Agile delivery practices.

• Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to influence quality practices across multiple teams.

• A collaborative leadership style with a passion for mentoring and capability development.

Desirable

• Experience with AI-assisted testing and quality engineering tools.

• Knowledge of data governance, data classification, masking, tokenisation, and synthetic data techniques.

• Experience defining and monitoring critical data elements and data quality metrics.

• Experience implementing data quality controls across modern data platforms, including both streaming and analytical workloads.

In Return:  

Based 10 minutes from Hamilton, in a semi-rural location, the role provides the opportunity for a lifestyle change for those seeking a better work -life balance and wanting to escape the 'rat race' and cost of living in bigger cities. Alternatively, we are open to flexible and remote working arrangements.

In addition to a competitive salary, you'll receive some great benefits including:

• Extra leave days

• Flexible working options

• Discounted health, life, income and disability insurances

• Access to our employee shares scheme

• Wellbeing discounts

• Free onsite parking and Free EV Chargers

This is a highly visible and pivotal role, where you'll have plenty of opportunity to achieve great results. You'll be joining a values-led, progressive organisation, where you'll play a role in driving the future of dairy in NZ.