Real Time Trader Dispatcher

About Contact Energy

Contact is focused on making life better for people in Aotearoa. The company operates across power, mobile, and broadband, and is actively reshaping how it works and how New Zealand is powered. Its work includes advancing renewable energy and improving customer experiences through digital channels. The team is guided by tikanga and values care, collaboration, and impact.

The Real Time Trader Dispatch team plays a critical role in that mission. This is the point where live energy operations happen, with minute-by-minute decisions that help keep supply secure, support environmental outcomes, and manage trade-offs across water, weather, markets, and people. The role directly influences how generation assets are run safely, efficiently, compliantly, and commercially.

Role overview

Based at the Clyde Operations Centre, this is a 24/7 operational role on a rotating roster of 12-hour shifts. You will be responsible for real-time control of generation assets and will work both independently and alongside stakeholders depending on the shift. The work is fast-moving, highly accountable, and often influenced by changing conditions and competing priorities.

Key duties

• Take immediate operational decisions that balance commercial performance, plant capability, system security, and environmental constraints.
• Run Contact’s generation assets in real time while maintaining safety, efficiency, and operational compliance.
• Track live generation output, hydrology, weather, and market movements, then adapt operating decisions as conditions change.
• Serve as a central contact point during incidents and operational events, coordinating information from generation sites, Transpower, and internal teams.
• Use sound judgement to identify when issues need escalation and follow the correct operating procedures.
• Work with consistency, accuracy, and attention to detail in an environment where precision matters.
• Stay composed and disciplined whether the shift is calm and routine or high-pressure and unpredictable.

What we’re looking for

You should be comfortable being the person others rely on, including taking sole-charge decisions during overnight shifts. In daytime operations, you’ll need to manage frequent queries, competing priorities, and high-stakes discussions with both internal and external stakeholders.

Experience in energy, control rooms, trading, or other live operational settings will be useful, but it is not essential. Candidates from outside the electricity sector can also succeed if they bring discipline, curiosity, and a calm, practical approach to learning.

Working style

• Confident working independently, including during overnight sole-charge periods.
• Able to make sensible decisions when information is incomplete or changing.
• Understands how individual decisions affect a large interconnected system.
• Patient and thorough in detailed, repetitive work where accuracy is critical.

How you engage with others

• Communicates clearly and calmly when several people need answers at once.
• Stays emotionally steady under pressure.
• Shows curiosity and asks questions to build understanding.
• Comfortable working within defined processes, escalation steps, and controls.

Useful background

• Experience in energy, electricity markets, control-room, trading, or continuous operations environments.
• Exposure to generation assets, environmental limits, or complex technical systems.
• Technical, engineering, or similar operational experience.

Additional information

This position is based in Clyde and requires regular on-site attendance. Because of the nature of the work, location flexibility is limited. The role follows a 24/7/365 roster, with shift work on a rotating basis and 12-hour shifts, usually from 7am to 7pm.

Contact offers strong learning and development opportunities along with a range of employee benefits, including free health insurance, boosted KiwiSaver contributions, access to Contact Shares, an annual “Good to be Home” payment to support home setup and wellbeing, a parental leave policy, and twice-yearly payments toward Contact products for eligible customers.

Applications close on Monday 22nd June. The company encourages interested candidates to apply early.

Contact values personal stories and encourages applicants to share what connects them to the role.

The company is committed to creating a workplace where people of all backgrounds feel respected, included, and able to bring their whole selves to work. Its hiring process is designed to support diversity and reduce bias, with a focus on reflecting the communities it serves across Aotearoa New Zealand.

Employee wellbeing is a priority, with support initiatives covering physical, mental, financial, and emotional wellbeing. These include flexible working arrangements where possible, employee network groups, and a market-leading parental leave policy.

Applicants must have the legal right to live and work in New Zealand.

Candidates are encouraged to apply even if they do not meet every requirement listed, as the company values potential, attitude, and transferable skills.

Recruitment agencies are not entitled to submit CVs unless a formal agreement has been arranged with the talent team. Unsolicited CVs may be considered directly by the company for current or future roles without any obligation to the agency, including CVs sent to line managers.