Imagine starting your day surrounded by the natural beauty of Aotearoa, working alongside a tight-knit team who share your passion for keeping the wheels of our hydro generation turning. As a Generation Technician – Operations with Contact Energy, you’ll be the heartbeat of our hydro assets in Taranaki, carrying out electrical maintenance and operational duties that keep our plant humming. Your mahi will see you monitoring plant conditions, responding to challenges, and making improvements that help us deliver safe, efficient, and reliable energy to our communities. This is a hands-on role based across our Pātea, Mangorei, and Motukawa hydro schemes three established renewable assets that harness the region’s rivers to deliver low-emissions electricity.
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About the Company
Whakatakoto te tūāpapa – Laying the foundation. Contact Energy stands as one of Aotearoa’s leading energy providers, committed to powering communities with a focus on sustainability, innovation, and kaitiakitanga. With a proud history of supporting local whānau and businesses, Contact is deeply invested in the future of New Zealand’s energy landscape, ensuring that every decision made today helps create a brighter, cleaner tomorrow. Our Taranaki hydro assets play a key role in regional generation and system resilience, and our team takes pride in maintaining this community-connected infrastructure that supports New Zealand’s transition to a more renewable energy future.
What You’ll Be Doing
- Monitor and Maintain Plant Conditions: Keep a close eye on equipment performance, responding to changes and carrying out routine inspections to ensure everything runs smoothly.
- Respond to Challenges and Emergencies: When issues arise, you’ll be there to troubleshoot and resolve them, always with safety front of mind.
- Perform Electrical Maintenance: Carry out hands-on maintenance tasks across our hydro assets, ensuring equipment is reliable and efficient.
- Plan and Support Outages: Work with the team to plan and execute outages, minimising downtime and maintaining system resilience.
- Contribute to Maintenance Strategies: Your insights and experience will help shape how we maintain and improve our assets over time.
- Support Team Across Different Sites: You’ll work across the Pātea, Mangorei, and Motukawa schemes, collaborating with your colleagues to keep everything running.
- Uphold Health and Safety: Every task you do will be carried out with the wellbeing of yourself and your mates front of mind—manaakitanga in action.
About You
We’re looking for someone who brings a practical mindset and a genuine commitment to safety and teamwork.
Ideally, you’ll bring:
- A Trade Certificate or equivalent qualification
- Experience in maintaining equipment and systems especially in power generation or heavy industry (this is a real bonus)
- Experience with high voltage plant, inventory management, or contract supervision (great if you have it, but not essential)
What matters most:
- Your willingness to learn and your drive to make a difference
- Problem-solving skills to tackle challenges as they arise
- Strong communication skills to build lasting relationships
- Integrity and a high standard of professionalism
- A knack for finding cost-effective solutions
Bonus skills:
- Experience diagnosing plant issues
- Background in mechanical or electrical plant
- Knowledge of control systems
But even if you don’t tick every box, bring your enthusiasm, your curiosity, and your commitment to our kaupapa—we welcome all who are keen to grow with us.
Why Join Contact Energy
As a permanent Contact kaimahi, you’ll enjoy a range of benefits designed to support your wellbeing and future:
- Great leadership and teammates work alongside people who value your contribution
- Development and growth opportunities we invest in your future
- Free health insurance cover looking after you and your whānau
- Better-than-average leave we believe in time to recharge
- Access to Contact Shares share in our success
- ‘Good to be Home’ annual payment toward your home setup and wellbeing
- Trail-blazing parental leave policy supporting growing families
- Bi-annual payments toward Contact Energy products enjoy the benefits of what we create
Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion
Here at Contact Energy (Te Mata Hiko), we know our strength lies in developing a sense of belonging—one that helps us attract and retain people with a broad range of perspectives and experiences. We’re committed to creating a workplace where everyone feels valued, respected, and empowered to bring their whole selves to work. Our goal is to reflect the diversity of our customers and communities to help build a better Aotearoa New Zealand.
Our inclusive hiring process is designed to embrace the diversity of Aotearoa New Zealand, ensuring a wide range of perspectives are included in our decision-making and helping reduce bias along the way.
The wellbeing of our kaimahi is super important to us. We use employee insights to offer a range of initiatives and resources to support physical, mental, financial, and emotional wellbeing—including flexible working arrangements, employee network groups, and our market-leading parental leave policy.
At Te Mata Hiko, we want everyone to thrive. We welcome applicants far and wide of every age, stage, background, and pride. Join us and be part of a team that values your passion and attitude just as much as your experience and skills.
Important Information
- Eligibility: Only candidates with the right to live and work in New Zealand will be considered for this role.
- Research shows that while men apply to jobs where they meet 60% of the criteria, women and those in underrepresented groups tend to only apply if they tick every box. We’re not about box ticking, so if you think you have what it takes but don’t meet everything stated above, please still get in touch. We’d love to kōrero.
How to Apply
Ready to become the heartbeat of our hydro assets? We’d like to hear from you. Please apply through the job listing with your CV and a brief cover letter telling us about your experience, your passion for renewable energy, and what you’d bring to the Contact Energy whānau.
Please note: Te Mata Hiko (Contact Energy) does not accept any CVs received from recruitment agencies where a formal engagement has not been confirmed and agreed to with our Talent team. In the event that unsolicited CVs are submitted by recruitment agencies, Te Mata Hiko (Contact Energy) reserves the right to contact these candidates directly and consider them for current/future vacancies without any financial obligation to the recruitment agency in question. This will also apply to any CVs sent directly to line managers.
Click apply now and take the first step toward a rewarding career in hydro generation with Contact Energy.
