Technical Practices Manager

Are you a tech-savvy professional with a passion for driving technical excellence?
- Opportunity to work across an innovative multi-agency Product, a first of its kind for the New Zealand Public Sector
- Flexible working + 3 extra Customs' service leave days
- Be a part of making genuine change to how we deliver value to our customers and users

Whakapuakanga Tangata Haere ki Aotearoa | New Zealand Traveller Declaration
The New Zealand Traveller Declaration (NZTD) is the new digital form used to collect information from travellers arriving into Aotearoa New Zealand via air and sea. It helps us ensure that people are only bringing in what they should be into our country; improving the safety and security of New Zealand.
The opportunities for how we can now evolve our product to positively impact these travellers and all the Border Protection agencies involved in their journey is endless. Our vision is for a modern, digital and streamlined border into New Zealand that supports seamless travel by air and sea.
To help us achieve this vision, we are seeking a highly skilled and motivated Technical Practices Manager to join our newly established NZTD team. We are looking for a driven leader who can shape the continuous improvement of our technical delivery practices, establish governance frameworks, and drive the adoption of emerging technologies.
If you thrive in a complex environment and have a passion for continuous improvement and making genuine change, we want you on our team

**What we value in the NZTD Tower**:

- 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 NZTD Tower 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 are able to 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.

Mō tēnei tūranga mahi | About this role
Reporting directly to the Tower Manager (NZTD), the Technical Practices Manager provides leadership and ownership of the continuous improvement of our technical delivery practices. You will collaborate with teams across the NZTD Tower / Customs / and other Government agencies, ensuring our team, product, platform and ways of working continue to support our customers and users as the product evolves.
Your role also encompasses the release process and environments management involved in the path to production to ensure that all environments are aligned to the product state and that all releases have met all quality standards before they can proceed.
The Technical Practices Manager is also a critical member of the Tower leadership team to make change and influence more effective delivery techniques and thinking. This includes enabling teams to plan and deliver smaller usable value earlier to passengers and users through modern and sustainable technical practices.
To be successful as Technical Practices Manager the following knowledge, experience, skills and personal attributes are required:

- Senior level and relevant experience in leading the future direction (development & operational support) of a live evolving product (ideally public facing), helping to translate product roadmaps into technical deliverables, helping to prioritise feature requests from stakeholders against technical enablers, and maintenance and support needs, and helping the teams make value driven decisions;
- Hands-on experience increasing technical practices fluency across all stages of the product life cycle and all aspects of operational support of business critical services;
- Experience working within an Agile delivery framework, ideally SAFe as well as methodologies across devops, Lean, and product management;
- Strong stakeholder management skills to partner with and guide individuals across agencies and within Customs, to effective outcomes;
- Be a self-motivated team-player, driven to achieve, and excited by the potential of leading and growing a high performing team;

Mahi ki te Mana Ārai o Aotearoa | Working at Customs
We aim to create a great place to work, where our people have a sense of belonging and the capability and desire to meet our future challenges. We are an organisation that is clear about our mission and this is underpinned by Te Pou Tokomanawa (the Foundations) and our Whanonga Pono (Values). Our work really matters