AI Engineer - AI Innovation Office

Westpac; Sydney; Hybrid; AUD 160,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible work

Learning opportunities

Volunteer opportunities

Mortgage discounts

Job summary

Westpac is building responsible, human‑centred AI at enterprise scale and seeks hands‑on AI engineers to turn ideas into secure, scalable, production‑ready solutions.

You’ll join the Data, Digital & AI function and work with the Chief AI Innovation Office to deploy practical AI capabilities across technology, data, risk, security, and product teams.

Qualifications

• Hands-on AI engineering in enterprise contexts is required.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals across backend and production systems.
• Experience operationalising AI/ML services beyond prototypes or academic projects.

Responsibilities

• Design, build and ship production‑ready AI applications, services, agents and internal tools.
• Integrate foundation models, ML models, RAG, vector stores and AI services into secure enterprise workflows.
• Build pipelines for prompt management, model invocation, grounding, validation and evaluation.
• Embed security, privacy, compliance, model risk and responsible AI guardrails from design to delivery.
• Build testing, evaluation, monitoring, and feedback loops for quality, performance, safety, and cost.
• Optimise latency, reliability, and cost across AI workloads.
• Collaborate with product, data, risk, security, and platform teams to clarify requirements, surface trade‑offs, and align priorities for delivery.

Skills

Hands-on AI engineering

Backend services

Model evaluation

RAG & embeddings

Vector databases

CI/CD

Observability

Stakeholder communication

Regulated environments

Education

CS/Engineering degree

Tools

Cloud platforms

LLM services

Observability tools

Security tools

Job description

• Sydney Location / Hybrid Working.
• Work with some of the brightest minds in the AI space.

What is the opportunity?

At Westpac, we’re building responsible, human-centred AI at enterprise scale — and we’re looking for hands‑on AI Engineers who can turn ideas into secure, scalable, production‑ready solutions.

You’ll join our Data, Digital & AI function and work with the Westpac Chief AI Innovation Office to build practical AI capability across technology, data, risk, security, product and business teams.

This is an engineering‑first role for people who can design, code, integrate, test and operationalise AI applications, services, agents and platforms — beyond proofs of concept.

You’ll bring strong software engineering fundamentals, practical AI/ML experience and the judgement to deliver safely in a complex, regulated enterprise environment.

Key Responsibilities –

• Design, build and ship production‑ready AI applications, services, agents and internal tools.
• Integrate foundation models, ML models, RAG, vector stores and AI services into secure enterprise workflows.
• Build pipelines for prompt management, model invocation, grounding, validation and evaluation.
• Embed security, privacy, compliance, model risk and responsible AI guardrails from design to delivery.
• Build testing, evaluation, monitoring, and feedback loops for quality, performance, safety, and cost.
• Optimise latency, reliability, and cost across AI workloads.
• Collaborate with product, data, risk, security, and platform teams to clarify requirements, surface trade‑offs, and align priorities for delivery.

Essential Ingredients …

• Hands‑on AI engineering experience in large, complex corporate or regulated environments.
• Ability to deal effectively with technical and non‑technical stakeholders at all levels.
• Tertiary qualifications in a relevant technology, engineering, computer science, data or related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• Strong software engineering background across backend services, APIs and production systems.
• Practical experience operationalising LLM, ML or AI services beyond prototypes or academic projects.
• Hands‑on knowledge of RAG, embeddings, vector databases, orchestration and model evaluation.
• Experience with cloud, CI/CD, automated testing, observability and enterprise release practices.
• Understanding of prompt design, evaluation, safety testing and responsible AI practices.
• Ability to balance experimentation speed with engineering quality and safety.
• Comfortable working with diverse stakeholders to triage requests, communicate constraints, and prioritise work based on impact and risk.

Why join us?

We’re obsessed with becoming our customers' #1 banking partner for life and we’re looking for people who are passionate about helping us achieve that goal. In return, we’re committed to making Westpac the best place to work in the country.

Here are just a few of the ways we’re already doing that:

• Special offers on banking products and discounts from top brands, including generous employee‑only mortgage rates!
• Flexible work arrangements to help you achieve a greater work/life balance, and a variety of leave options including Culture, Lifestyle and Wellbeing leave.
• Tailored learning and development opportunities to help grow your career within the bank.
• Lots of opportunities to ‘give back’ to the Community by getting involved in our many volunteering initiatives.

Create your future today!

We’re all about creating a supportive and inclusive community. We welcome everyone – no matter your age, gender, background, or abilities. We also provide additional support to welcome our veterans, Indigenous Australians and neurodiverse community.

If you need any adjustments during the recruitment process, you can find out more information and additional contact details by visiting the "People with Disability and/or needing Accessibility Requirements" page on our website.