Head of Engineering AI & Data

REA Group; City of Melbourne; Hybrid; AUD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work

Birthday leave

Parental leave

Volunteer leave

Hackdays

Job summary

REA Group is seeking a senior engineering leader to head the Data Services, Products and AI Enablement domain. You will shape strategy, design, delivery and governance of data and AI platforms to enable smarter customer experiences and better business decisions.

You will lead engineering managers, partner with product leaders, ensure platform health and security, and guide scalable data‑intensive applications while driving responsible AI adoption and cross‑team alignment.

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading engineering teams in complex product or platform environments.
• Experience leading Engineering Managers and nurturing leadership capability.
• Deep experience with data & AI platforms and data pipelines at scale.
• Strong technical understanding of modern data architectures and reliability.
• Experience partnering with senior product counterparts to set priorities.

Responsibilities

• Lead the engineering strategy for Data and AI across teams.
• Guide technical solution design and governance across the domain.
• Ensure engineering excellence, standards, and practices.
• Maintain operational excellence including health, resilience, security, and compliance.
• Coordinate delivery across multiple teams with clear dependencies.
• Hire and grow engineering leaders and experts.

Skills

People leadership

Engineering management

Data & AI platforms

AI experience

Distributed systems

Observability

Governance & risk

Cross-team collaboration

Tools

Cloud platforms

Data pipelines

Job description

Lead the engineering capability for Data Services, Products and AI Enablement in the Financial Services Product & Technology team. Drive strategy, design, delivery, and governance of data and AI platforms that enable smarter customer experiences and better business decisions.

Responsibilities

• Lead the engineering strategy for Data and AI, aligned with business priorities, technology strategy, and enterprise data principles.
• Oversee and guide technical solution design across the domain, drawing on team members to arrive at optimal outcomes.
• Ensure engineering excellence through strong technical judgment, decision‑making, and adoption of company standards, platforms, and practices.
• Maintain technical operational excellence across products and services, including system health, resilience, performance, reliability, security, and compliance.
• Partner with the Principal Product Manager, Data & AI to shape roadmaps that connect business value, customer needs, data strategy, and engineering feasibility.
• Ensure data & AI platforms, pipelines, and services are built with strong governance, clear ownership, appropriate controls, and high trust in quality and integrity.
• Guide teams in building scalable data‑intensive applications, data services, and AI‑enabled capabilities that evolve sustainably over time.
• Support responsible AI adoption by helping teams make sound choices about architecture, experimentation, tooling, data readiness, model integration, and operational guardrails.
• Contribute to the broader technical strategy and help align cross‑team decisions where dependencies exist.
• Hire, grow, and support the next generation of engineering leaders and deep technical specialists.
• Coordinate delivery across multiple teams, maintaining accountability for outcomes, visibility of progress, and clear management of dependencies and risks.
• When required, support larger cross‑functional programs and work closely with program and business stakeholders to shape execution plans.

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading engineering teams in complex product or platform environments.
• Strong people‑leadership experience, including leading Engineering Managers and nurturing leadership capability.
• Deep experience with data & AI platforms, data‑intensive systems, data pipelines, data services or data products at scale.
• Solid, recent, and practical AI experience, with the judgment to help teams apply AI in valuable, sustainable, and responsible ways.
• Strong technical understanding of modern data architectures, distributed systems, platform health, observability, reliability, and operational excellence.
• Experience shaping and delivering technical strategy across multiple squads or product areas.
• Experience partnering closely with senior product counterparts to turn ambiguous strategy into clear priorities and execution plans.
• Strong understanding of governance, compliance, risk, and quality expectations in environments where trust in data matters.
• Experience in financial services, lending, regulated products, CRM/data ecosystems, or applied AI in operational product environments highly regarded.
• Proven experience in leading data & AI platforms covering event‑driven architectures, data ingestion & orchestration, data warehousing, multi‑cloud architectures, and LLM model capabilities.
• Familiarity with monitoring & observability, security platforms, RAG systems, multi‑agent workflows, cloud AI services, LLM gateways, AI observability, cost management, and platform modernisation is beneficial.

Benefits

• A hybrid and flexible approach to working.
• Flexible leave options including birthday leave and the ability to purchase additional leave.
• Flexible parental leave for primary and secondary carers.
• Volunteer leave, community grants, matched payroll giving, and a Community Café that donates 100% of revenue to charity.
• Hackdays for bringing big ideas to life.

Equal Employment Opportunity

We are committed to providing a working environment that embraces and values diversity, equity and inclusion. We are an equal opportunity employer and welcome applications from all qualified individuals.