Kia ora!
At Air New Zealand, we’re constantly evolving, embracing innovation and pushing boundaries to create extraordinary experiences for our customers and employees. As we continue to grow and transform, we're seeking individuals who are passionate about making a difference and playing a key role in our journey. This is why we are excited to offer the opportunity to join our Digital team and help design, ship and scale business-changing Generative AI solutions.
This is a hands-on role where you’ll balance coding and cutting-edge AI. You’ll help drive the engineering of reliable, secure, and high-performing AI services, while mentoring others and influencing Air New Zealand’s AI strategy. Your work will directly support innovations such as personalised digital experiences, smarter operations, and AI-assisted employee tools that make travel simpler, smarter and more sustainable.
The Role You’ll Play
As a Senior AI Engineer, you will:
- Design, build, and maintain Generative AI services and applications in Python, from proof-of-concept to production.
- Design and implement robust AI solutions, integrating enterprise data, tools, and platforms securely to deliver reliable, scalable business outcomes.
- Implement safeguards, guardrails, monitoring, and governance for responsible AI usage.
- Collaborate with business teams to identify opportunities where Generative AI can deliver value.
- Stay ahead of emerging GenAI technologies and bring innovative approaches into practice
What You’ll Bring
You’re a Senior Engineer who solves real-world problems with AI and data, and has experience developing and deploying safe, scalable GenAI applications from proof-of-concept to production. You’re equally comfortable architecting agentic systems, writing clean production code, and guiding others to deliver high-quality AI-centric solutions.
- Proven expertise in Generative AI: LLMs, agents, embeddings/rerankers, vector databases, and prompt design/evaluation.
- Strong software engineering fundamentals including developing in Python and experience with asynchronous frameworks (FastAPI), testing & mocking, and CI/CD.
- Strong data engineering & MLOps fundamentals including designing and querying relational (SQL) and NoSQL databases, feature stores, model/registry versioning, offline/online evaluation, and golden datasets.
- Experience with cloud platforms (AWS - preferred, Azure, or GCP) and containerisation (Docker, Kubernetes). Experience with IaC (Terraform/CloudFormation) advantageous.
- Security, privacy, and compliance in enterprise settings; comfort working with sensitive data and regulated environments.
- A growth mindset: curiosity, experimentation, and the drive to turn ideas into robust, maintainable systems.
What we’re looking for
- Strong experience designing, building and scaling Generative AI services and applications
- Advanced Python engineering skills, with experience developing secure, production-ready systems
- Hands-on experience with LLMs, agents, embeddings, rerankers, vector databases, RAG pipelines, and prompt design or evaluation
- Experience taking AI solutions from proof-of-concept through to reliable, scalable, production-ready services
- Strong software engineering practices, including testing, mocking, CI/CD, APIs, and ideally asynchronous frameworks such as FastAPI
- Experience with cloud platforms, preferably AWS, and containerisation tools such as Docker or Kubernetes
- Understanding of responsible AI practices, including safeguards, guardrails, monitoring, governance, privacy, security, and working with sensitive enterprise data
- Strong communication and collaboration skills, with a curious, experimental mindset and the drive to turn emerging AI opportunities into robust, maintainable solutions
Ready for take-off?
If you’re excited by the opportunity to work with cutting-edge AI technologies, turn ideas into robust production-ready systems, and help shape how Generative AI is used across Air New Zealand, we’d love to hear from you.
Applications close 3 July 2026.
At Air New Zealand, we are proudly committed to diversity, equity and inclusion and believe in creating a truly inclusive workplace where everyone can be themselves and thrive. Our people are our greatest asset – because while everything else we do in our operation can be replicated by our competitors, it is our people that truly set us apart. We are firm believers in celebrating the differences and diversity of thought our people bring to their roles. We encourage candidates from diverse backgrounds, including those with a disability, additional health and mental health needs, and/or are neurodiverse to apply for our roles.
If you have encountered any accessibility barriers and require further information or reasonable accommodations to our recruitment process, please reach out to the recruiter listed on this job advert so they are able to support you to freely participate equitably in our recruitment and selection process.
Whāia te pae tawhiti kia tata. Ko te pae tata whakamaua, kia tina.
"Seek to bring distant horizons closer. Once near, seize them and make them your reality."
Skills Required
- Proven expertise in Generative AI: LLMs, agents, embeddings, rerankers, vector databases, RAG pipelines, and prompt design/evaluation.
- Advanced Python engineering skills and experience developing secure, production-ready systems, including asynchronous frameworks (FastAPI).
- Experience taking AI solutions from proof-of-concept through to reliable, scalable, production-ready services.
- Strong software engineering practices including testing, mocking, CI/CD, and API development.
- Data engineering and MLOps fundamentals: designing/querying SQL and NoSQL databases, feature stores, model/registry versioning, offline/online evaluation, golden datasets.
- Experience with cloud platforms (AWS preferred; Azure or GCP) and containerisation tools such as Docker and Kubernetes.
- Experience with security, privacy, and compliance in enterprise settings, handling sensitive and regulated data.
- Experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform or CloudFormation).
- Strong communication, collaboration, mentorship ability, and a growth mindset to turn AI ideas into maintainable systems.
What We Do
Kia Ora, Ni Hao, Gidday, konnichiwa, Talofa, Bula, Hello and Welcome to Air New Zealand, your journey starts here. Air New Zealand is one of the world's leading airlines, known around the world, not just for our name and our innovation but also for our reputation. We are recognised as "New Zealand's Most Reputable Organisation" for our strong leadership, customer service orientation, innovation, brand, corporate values, and our role as a strong ambassador for New Zealand. Each year we make sure our passengers who fly to, from and within New Zealand enjoy our uniquely Kiwi way of doing things. At Air New Zealand, we are all about people. Ambitious, helpful, proud, down-to-earth, caring people, who look after the needs of more than 13 million people every year. We look at ways of making the experience better for our customers and allowing people to experience our New Zealand. Our people drive us to be among the world's best, frequently winning awards in all aspects of our operations, testament to the Air New Zealanders living this culture daily, in the way they deliver customer experience. Whilst it's led from the top, it is delivered by thousands of people, constantly doing things that make a big difference!
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