Head Of Engineering Ai & Data

Rea Group; Melbourne; Hybrid; AUD 230,000 - 320,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid working

Flexible leave options

Flexible parental leave

Because We Care program

Hackdays

Job summary

REA Group in Melbourne is seeking a Head of Engineering, Data & AI to lead data and AI engineering strategy within the Financial Services Product & Technology team. You will shape roadmaps, govern data platforms and AI capabilities, and guide multiple squads to deliver value across realestate.com.au.

You will hire and mentor senior engineers, partner with product leaders to translate strategy into execution, and champion responsible AI practices across the organisation.

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading engineering teams in complex product or platform environments.
• Strong people leadership experience, including leading Engineering Managers.
• Deep experience with data & AI platforms, data pipelines and data services at scale.
• Governance, compliance, risk and data quality expectations in data-driven environments.

Responsibilities

• Lead the engineering strategy for Data and AI, aligned to business priorities and enterprise data principles.
• Oversee and guide technical solution design across your domain with cross-team collaboration.
• Ensure engineering excellence and adoption of REA standards, platforms and practices.
• Maintain operational excellence including health, resilience, performance and security.
• Shape roadmaps with the Principal Product Manager to connect business value and engineering feasibility.
• Ensure governance, ownership, controls and high trust in data platforms, pipelines and services.
• Guide teams in building scalable data-intensive applications and AI-enabled capabilities.
• Hire, develop and support the next generation of engineering leaders and specialists.
• Coordinate delivery across multiple squads and manage dependencies and risks.
• Support cross-functional programs with program and business stakeholders.

Job description

• Lead a strategic engineering domain at the centre of data, AI and financial services innovation!
• Shape our platforms and capabilities that power smarter customer experiences and better business decisions!
• Permanent full time role based in Richmond

We're REA
With bold and ambitious goals, REA Group is changing the way the world experiences property. No matter where you're at on your property journey, we're here to help with every step - whether that's finding or financing your next home.

Our people are the key to our success. At the heart of everything we do, is a thriving culture centred around high performance and care. We are purpose driven and collaborative, which drives innovation and our ability to make a real impact. As such, we’re proud to have been named in Australia’s “Top 5” Best Workplaces two years in a row, as well as being recognised as a Best Workplace for Women.

Where the team fits in

The Head of Engineering, Data & AI will join the Financial Services Product & Technology team located in our Financial Services business, serving Mortgage Choice, PropTrack and Campaign Agent finance, data & AI experiences connected to realestate.com.au. Our purpose is to offer home finance and other financial services to customers at key moments in their property journey. Given the opportunity of that audience, our vision is to better connect property search, broker productivity, data, and intelligent customer experiences through seamless digital products and strong engineering foundations.

What the role is all about

• Lead the engineering strategy for Data and AI, aligned to business priorities, technology strategy and enterprise data principles
• Oversee and guide technical solution design across your domain, drawing on technical team members to arrive at the right outcomes for both the domain and the enterprise
• Ensure engineering excellence across your teams through strong technical judgment, sound decision making, and adoption of REA standards, platforms and practices
• Maintain technical operational excellence across your products and services, including system health, resilience, performance, reliability, security and engineering risk compliance
• Partner closely with the Principal Product Manager, Data & AI to shape roadmaps that connect business value, customer needs, data product 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 can evolve sustainably over time. Drive AI capability uplift in our Product & Technology teams.
• Support responsible and practical adoption of AI by helping teams make sound choices about architecture, experimentation, tooling, data readiness, model integration and operational guardrails
• Contribute to the technical strategy of the broader business unit 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
• Where required, support larger cross-functional programs and work closely with program and business stakeholders to shape execution plans

Who we’re looking for

• Proven experience leading engineering teams in complex product or platform environments
• Strong people leadership experience, including leading Engineering Managers and growing leadership capability through others
• 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 will be highly regarded.
• Proven experience in leading data & AI platforms including the following areas (the tech we use is listed in brackets, experience in that specific tech is not required): Event Driven Architectures (Kafka, CDC, N+1 integration), Data ingestion + orchestration (Apache Airflow), Data Warehousing (GCP Big Query), Multi cloud architectures (GCP, AWS) and LLM Model Capabilities
• Experience in any of the below areas is beneficial (the tech we use is listed in brackets, experience in that specific technology is not required): Monitoring & Observability platforms (Splunk, New Relic), Security platforms (Wiz), RAG systems (Vecto), Multi agent workflows (Langraph), Cloud AI services (AWS Bedrock, GCP Vertex AI), LLM Gateways (Portkey), AI Observability (Arize) & Evaluation Patterns (Golden datasets, LLM-as-a-judge), Cost Management, Platform modernisation

The REA experience

The physical, mental, emotional and financial health of our people is something we’ll never stop caring about. This is a place to learn and grow.

Some of our Perks & Benefits include:

• A hybrid and flexible approach to working
• Flexible leave options including, birthday leave and purchase additional leave
• Flexible parental leave offering for primary and secondary carers
• Our Because We Care program offers employees volunteering leave, community grants, matched payroll giving and our Community Café donates 100% of revenue to charity
• Hackdays so you can bring your big ideas to life

Our commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

We are committed to providing a working environment that embraces and values diversity, equity and inclusion. We believe teams with diverse ideas and experiences are more creative, more effective and fuel disruptive thinking. If you've got the skills, dedication and enthusiasm to learn but don't necessarily meet every single point on the job description, please still get in touch.

Join our Talent Neighbourhood

Keen to be part of REA but didn't find a perfect match with this opportunity? Perhaps the timing isn't right? You should join our Talent Neighbourhood!