Careers

Help power Aotearoa! Electricity is essential to our lives and our economy. By joining our team, you can contribute to New Zealand's transition to renewable energy and help keep the lights on now and in the future.

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Join our team and help support Aotearoa’s transition to renewable energy.
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Why work for us?

  • Our work is diverse and often topical, addressing the big opportunities and challenges facing the electricity market.
  • We are an efficient and effective regulator. Our work contributes to electricity policy and regulatory reform that leads to better outcomes for all New Zealanders.
  • We engage with a diverse range of stakeholders and consumers across Aotearoa to make sure we understand key issues.
  • Our work is internationally recognised, with our input and advice sought by energy regulators from other countries.
  • Our independence enables us to work across government agencies and policy portfolios to give advice on difficult and often politically sensitive topics.
  • We are working on an efficient, sustainable path to support the government’s objectives of achieving 100% renewable energy generation by 2035 and 50% renewable energy by 2035.
  • We like to lead by example and take active steps to measure and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.

What we can offer you

  • We offer a friendly and intellectually stimulating workplace.
  • We are passionate about the work that we do and respect honesty, integrity and professional judgement.
  • We believe that differences and diverse ways of thinking and being are essential to our success.
  • We support staff to develop to their full potential - we offer training courses, mentoring and secondments.
  • We care for staff wellbeing, offering flexible working arrangements and a range of support - we offer a fitness subsidy, working from home equipment contribution, health check contribution, vision care, flu injections and an employee assistance programme.
  • We want our people to feel they are treated equally and valued for the work they do. We are committed to reducing our gender and ethnic pay gaps. See how we’re tracking in our latest pay equity plan.
  • We are committed to becoming an equal opportunities employer who knows that equity, diversity and inclusion lead to a stronger organisation. We are a proud member of Diversity Works and have taken the Pride Pledge to support our rainbow inclusion and diversity journey.­
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What our staff say

We have approximately 110 staff from a diverse range of disciplines – from lawyers, to economists, physicists, engineers, marketeers and accountants. Meet some of our team...

Soraiya Daud

Advisor – Accountability and organisational performance

Soraiya supports the Electricity Authority to meet its accountability requirements. For example, as a Crown entity, we need to demonstrate how we're achieving our statutory objective and strategic ambitions. This is a fundamental part of ensuring we're transparent and operating in the interests of the New Zealand public.

“I’m passionate about ensuring that our public institutions work for the people. It seems like common sense, but in so many communities around the world, this isn’t the case. It's an honour to play a role in ensuring the Electricity Authority is accountable to the people of New Zealand.”

Previously, Soraiya worked in the NGO sector at a national and local level in policy, advocacy, communications and community development roles.

Sam Hales

Advisor – Communications and engagement

Sam provides strategic communications advice to our projects, conducts media monitoring of industry news and events, and provides responses to public enquiries and callers. “Communicating complex knowledge to key stakeholders such as industry and the public is a strong interest of mine."

"Electricity and the grid system is an incredibly complicated machine. It not only supplies people with energy in a safe and efficient manner, but is almost entirely taken for granted by those who use it. Being able to work at the Electricity Authority where I can make a difference by helping people to understand how it all works and why we do the important work we do, is very rewarding."

Sam has a Masters in science communication and a background in writing, with a strong emphasis on making complicated themes and topics accessible to a wide audience.

Julia Hall

Principal Advisor – Monitoring

Julia is part of our Monitoring team who are responsible for carrying out post-implementation reviews − evaluating an initiative the Electricity Authority has implemented against its expected outcomes. From the Authority’s perspective, this enables learning about how regulatory decisions are affecting the sector and whether further policy action is required.

A typical day for Julia can involve everything from writing code and analysing data, writing up what she has found from the data, or reading consultation papers and submissions. She might also get the opportunity to speak to industry players about how certain changes have affected them – an aspect of the job she enjoys.

“It’s really interesting talking to different people in the industry, getting their thoughts on how it’s working for them,” she says. “I’ve also enjoyed helping develop our monitoring for the trading conduct provisions and discussing this monitoring approach with industry.”

Sarah Hughson

Advisor – Compliance

Sarah provides specialist compliance advice to industry participants to help them navigate the changing regulatory environment. Regulations in the electricity industry can be complex with many intersecting points. Sarah helps them to mitigate risks and works to keep our compliance processes running smoothly.

“I’m in a job where there is always something new to learn about and new connections to be made,” Sarah says.

Sarah has worked in a variety of roles since she started with us in 2015. She has provided a gateway between the operational arm of the Electricity Authority and industry participants and market operations service providers (like NZX and Transpower). Sarah has also fielded consumer-related questions and enquiries about industry-related processes.

Corey Kok

Quantitative Analyst – Monitoring

Corey analyses key trends in the New Zealand electricity market and quantifies the impact of policies to understand how and why the market changes.

“I enjoy gaining insights into the New Zealand Electricity Market - all the factors that can influence the spot market price and how policies influence participant behaviour.”

Corey previously worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Technical University of Denmark. His research focused on developing markets and tools to dispatch demand response optimally as part of the EcoGrid 2.0 project.

His PhD with the Electric Power Optimisation Centre at the University of Auckland focused on modelling generation capacity expansion in the context of the New Zealand Electricity Market.

Sheila Matthews

Manager – Future security and resilience

Sheila's team is focused on projects to ensure the power system remains secure and resilient and achieves long-term benefits for consumers, as New Zealand transitions towards a low-emissions energy system.

"Having an operational background, I know the challenges of maintaining security of the power system in a fast changing energy world. I am really passionate about the role my team is playing in achieving system security and resilience as we transition to a fully renewable energy system."

Sheila is an electrical engineer with an MBA. She has extensive experience in the electricity industry, mainly in the transmission sector and distribution sectors. She has also worked with engineering consultancies.

Tuong Nguyen

Principal Analyst – Data and information management

Tuong is part of our Data and information management team who are responsible for managing the data modelling and analysis of the wholesale electricity market. A lot of this data is then made publicly available through the EMI website.

“We have a lot of data to work with in our data warehouse and great tools to analyse it,” Tuong says. “This makes it much easier for the Electricity Authority to see what goes on in the market and to check the market works as expected.”

Tuong works with teams across the Electricity Authority to provide data or tools to support projects. This may involve wading through large sets of complex data and finding ways to make it meaningful and helpful for others.

Tuong joined the Electricity Authority shortly after it was established in 2011. He has built up an extensive knowledge and interest in the wholesale electricity market, as well as during previous roles at Transpower and Contact.

Tuong was based in Singapore working for the Energy Market Company when a friend told him of a job opening at Transpower. He jumped at the chance to move to New Zealand to join the electricity industry here. Since joining the Electricity Authority, Tuong has helped on many wholesale market development projects.

Chris Otton

Manager, Operations – Market policy

At the Electricity Authority, Chris can put his background in applied physics, love of problem solving and strong interest in the wholesale electricity market into action.

Chris provides expert advice and analysis on developing the wholesale market including the primary spot market and ancillary service markets.

Chris started his career in the electricity sector as a market services analyst at the system operator (Transpower). The main focus of his role was managing and monitoring ancillary services provision and developing system operator’s data storage and reporting capabilities.

Before joining the Electricity Authority, Chris worked for Contact Energy, first as a spot trader and then in business performance. In the spot trader role, he focused on the week ahead trading strategy − looking at plant and fuel availability, market conditions and financial priorities, and then set a broad strategy for the real time traders to implement.

Chris says, “Moving into a regulatory environment has been a big change for me but I’ve found everyone at the Authority to be very supportive and more than willing to share their experience. It’s great to be working with such a passionate and knowledgeable group.” 

Paulo Soares

Quantitative Analyst – Monitoring

Paulo is part of our Monitoring team, providing analysis on market performance and future scenarios for electricity generation in New Zealand. His work contributes to enhancing our understanding of current market behaviour and the possible consequences that changes in the electricity generation mix could bring.

“The world is going through a major energy transition, and New Zealand is no exception. It is very exciting to contribute to the future of electricity in Aotearoa.”

Paulo has a background in energy and environmental engineering. Previously, he was a Research Scholar at the Pennsylvania State University (USA), part of a Renewable Art and Design project developing innovative ways to teach renewable energy. Paulo lectured classes on solar energy conversion systems and renewable energy and got his PhD with the Solar Collab research group.