Lead AI Engineer - Intelligence & Protection

Westpac; Sydney; Hybrid; AUD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Westpac AI Services in Australia is seeking a hands-on technical leader to build a Financial Crime Protection intelligence solution. You will own end-to-end delivery across data, APIs, AI and review experiences, translating domain needs into practical production outcomes.

You will set solution directions, mentor engineers, and ensure traceability, bounded tooling and compliant review. This role offers a hybrid Sydney/Melbourne work model with real impact.

Qualifications

• Deep Financial Crime Protection domain-SME experience with fraud/AML workflows.
• Expert full-stack engineering across backend, APIs, data stores and modern web apps.
• Strong API, event and dataflow design with identity, entitlements and audit.
• Data, graph and investigation engineering including lineage and access controls.
• AI service engineering across ML signals, LLMs, prompts, monitoring and fallback.
• Accessible human review with evidence provenance and decision recovery.
• Judgement on when traditional rules or AI provide safe solutions.

Responsibilities

• Lead a major Financial Crime Protection intelligence solution from intent through design, build, verification, release and operation.
• Translate fraud/AML needs into production outcomes while guiding engineering decisions.
• Define boundaries between signals, investigations, and human decisions across systems.
• Mentor engineers and turn delivery lessons into reusable patterns.

Skills

Financial crime SME

Go or Python

SQL

TypeScript

React

Next.js

APIs design

Data lineage

ML/AI services

Security & privacy

Job description

• Build intelligence that hits hard on financial crime—while evidence stays traceable and every decision stays human.
• Sydney or Melbourne Based / Hybrid Working

Time to make real impact and protect our customers!

Join AI Services as the hands-on technical leader for a major Financial Crime Protection intelligence solution.

You will bring deep Financial Crime Protection domain expertise and build and guide complete products across governed data, backend services, APIs, AI and accessible review experiences.

Importantly, you will set solution-level directions while staying close to design, code, testing and production support. The systems you lead will support authorised decisions without making fraud, AML, employee, customer or operational decisions.

How you will help beat the bad guys …

• Lead a major Financial Crime Protection intelligence solution from intent through design, build, verification, release and operation.
• Bring Financial Crime Protection domain-SME thinking into engineering decisions, translating complex fraud, AML and protection needs into safe, practical production outcomes.
• Set clear boundaries between signals, investigation, human decisions and actions in other systems.
• Create traceable contracts across source data, events, entities, facts, signals, models, agents, reviews and downstream systems.
• Ensure missing, stale, denied, incomplete and unavailable information is reported honestly.
• Enforce agent controls outside the model, with approved bounded tools, access controls and safe action boundaries.
• Protect sensitive and Highly Protected data through least privilege, minimisation, pseudonymisation and controlled disclosure.
• Lead versioned and reversible releases for data contracts, models, embeddings, APIs and workflows, with tested rollback and recovery.
• Mentor engineers and turn specialist delivery lessons into reusable patterns.

Key Ingredients for Success …

• Deep Financial Crime Protection domain-SME experience, with strong practical knowledge of fraud, AML, investigations, intelligence workflows, controls and human decision-making in a complex regulated environment.
• Expert full-stack engineering across backend services, APIs, data stores and modern web applications, with relevant technologies including Go or Python, SQL, TypeScript, React and Next.js.
• Strong API, event, dataflow and service-boundary design, including identity, entitlements, state, audit and recovery.
• Strong data, graph and investigation engineering covering lineage, time, quality, entity resolution, bounded traversal and purpose-based access.
• Strong AI service engineering across ML signals, LLMs, RAG, agents, prompt and model evaluation, tool controls, versioning, monitoring and fallback.
• Strong engineering for accessible human review, including evidence, provenance, uncertainty, approval, disposition and recovery.
• Sound judgement about when rules, SQL, conventional ML, graphs or generative AI provide the simplest safe solution.

Work with purpose …

You will help deliver practical AI outcomes while applying Westpac engineering, security, privacy, Responsible AI, risk and operational resilience requirements. Approved AI tools may support delivery, but people remain accountable for design, controls, review and production decisions.

You will lead solution-level engineering for sensitive Financial Crime Protection intelligence outcomes—bringing genuine domain-SME credibility, keeping evidence traceable, tools bounded and human decision authority explicit.

Let's build AI safety that matters …

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 ourwebsite.