Auckland, as New Zealand's largest city and commercial hub, is home to a massive and diverse IT workforce spanning enterprise, startups, government, and even hybrid/remote working for global tech firms. The market is constantly evolving and is extremely competitive across both permanent and contract roles.

In contrast to Wellington's government leaning workforce, Auckland is where you'll find the bulk of private sector action. This is especially true across SaaS, Fintech, retail, health, and telco. What is typical is that even if a company has headquarters in another part of NZ (Such as Wellington or Christchurch), they will atleast have a small satellite office in Auckland too.

Common IT Roles in Auckland

With such a huge mix of industries operating out of Auckland, the range of IT roles is equally varied. Product roles dominate, but there's also a strong demand for roles in data, infrastructure, cloud, and customer support.

Here are some of the most common roles we see in the Auckland market :

• Software Developers: Auckland is a developer heavy market. Fullstack developers in particular are in high demand where any engineer with a backend language paired with a javascript framework like Vue, React, or Angular are sought after. C#.NET and Java tend to dominate backend technologies, with AWS and Azure being equally popular as cloud platforms. Mobile developers across Flutter, Swift, and Kotlin all have multiple roles available at any one time. This is all to say that companies are pretty much always hiring engineers in Auckland.
• Product Owners & Product Managers: With such an abundance of product development happening in Auckland, it's only natural that the demand for product owners to be high. Most companies operate in some sort of agile delivery, in particular Scrum, and so certified product owners are never out of work.
• QA & Automation Testers: Testing is extremely popular in Auckland with almost every organization having QA roles. Manual testing is still relevant, but there's a noticable push towards automation using Playwright, Selenium, Cypress, or an API testing framework. Even if a role is advertised as a manual tester, organizations typically look for some automation skills as a bonus anyway.
• Cloud & DevOps Engineers: As opposed to Wellington's strong drive to move from on-premise to the cloud, Auckland companies tend to be cloud first. That means there is a strong demand for both (certified) AWS and Azure engineers. Experience using CI/CD tooling such as Azure Devops, Bamboo, Jenkins or Team City is also a key area.
• UX/UI Designers & Researchers: Design roles are very active across Auckland, in particular with customer focused product teams. In particular, we see more roles asking for experience in user testing, accessibility, and design systems rather than purely UI design roles.
• Delivery Managers & Scrum Masters: Agile delivery roles remain important in Auckland, but are slowly becoming less in demand. Typically we see "agile coach" type roles being advertised, but dedicated scrum master roles are much less common.

All of these roles tend to skew towards permanent employment, although contracting is absolutely present. Compared to Wellington's government dominated long term contracts, Auckland tends to be much faster paced and contracts are seemingly less likely to be renewed for years on end.

Common Tech Stacks in Auckland

Auckland companies tend to stick with modern, but proven tech stacks. Especially when it comes to the SAAS and product space. Here's what we see frequently :

• React / Vue / Angular: All three of the major front end technologies are in heavy use in Auckland. React tends to be the most common by a large distance, with Vue and Angular seeing use across everything from startup products to enterprise.
• C# / Azure: Microsoft technologies, especially the pairing of C# and Azure, are extremely popular in Auckland. C# in particular will always have open roles for pretty much every skill level.
• Java: Java has a very strong foundation in the Auckland market with many open roles. Java does tend to skew towards larger enterprises and less of the startup world however.
• PHP: PHP is less popular in the Auckland market, but still sees use across both product development, and agency style work. PHP is not seen as an "enterprise" language in the market, and so you typically do not see large companies utilizing it.
• Cloud Platforms (Azure & AWS): Azure and AWS see huge usage across all of Auckland. You'll need to know one or the other realistically to get a role. Google Cloud Platform does have roles pop up from time to time, but it's rare.
• Devops tooling: While not a technology itself, the usage of tooling such as Docker/K8s, CI/CD tooling like Github Actions, Gitlab, Azure Devops, and others like Terraform, Datadog, Splunk etc see huge action. Auckland companies tend to focus on doing things "right" and so you will often see roles that have a laundry list of "nice to haves" when it comes to Devops.

Things to Consider

Auckland offers the largest IT job market in the country, but it comes with its own nuances:

• Competition: Auckland attracts new grads, experienced professionals, and new immigrants to the country. It makes certain roles like front end developers extremely competitive. A well written CV and a tailored cover letter are key to standing out from the crowd.
• Cost of Living: Salaries in Auckland are typically higher than the rest of the country by $10k - $20k, but so is the cost of living. If you are considering relocating, weight up the lifestyle tradeoff carefully.
• Traffic: While less of an issue with many companies offering hybrid or even fully remote work. Traffic in Auckland can add a couple of hours to your work day with your daily commute.

In Summary

Auckland is New Zealand's tech powerhouse. It's fast moving, competitive, and full of opportunity. If you are looking to grow your tech career and land yourself a high impact role, Auckland should be top of your list.