Lead AI Engineering & Model Lifecycle for Network Ops

Narooma; Melbourne; Hybrid; AUD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible work arrangements

Employee discounts

On-site facilities and amenities

Parental Leave 16 weeks

Counselling and wellbeing support

Free Optus bus service

Job summary

Optus is seeking an experienced leader for AD, AI Engineering & Model Lifecycle in Melbourne. You will guide the lifecycle of AI capabilities across Network Operations, ensuring trusted and scalable models with strong governance and human oversight.

You will drive a portfolio of AI capabilities, establish standards, and partner with security and governance to ensure compliant, cost-efficient operations while delivering measurable business value.

Qualifications

• Extensive leadership experience in telecoms, AI/ML engineering, Network Operations or large tech environments.
• Experience leading enterprise-scale AI engineering, MLOps or production AI capabilities.
• Strong knowledge of AI/ML engineering, feature engineering, model deployment, monitoring and lifecycle governance.
• Understanding of operational data, service topology, observability and automation for AI-driven operations.
• Experience implementing responsible AI, explainability, security and human oversight in production.
• Ability to lead cross-domain teams and influence senior stakeholders.
• Strong commercial and vendor management capabilities, including cost optimisation and value realisation.
• Excellent strategic thinking and executive stakeholder engagement skills.
• Relevant tertiary qualifications or equivalent industry experience.

Responsibilities

• Own and evolve the Operational AI Engineering and Model Lifecycle strategy and roadmap across Network Operations.
• Translate priorities into a portfolio of AI capabilities aligned to reliability and customer outcomes.
• Lead the engineering and industrialisation of production-ready AI capabilities and deployment patterns.
• Establish reusable AI engineering standards and components for scalable delivery across domains.
• Own the lifecycle of operational AI models from production acceptance to monitoring and retraining.
• Establish model registries, performance monitoring and controls for accuracy and drift.
• Implement governance, explainability, traceability and human-oversight controls in AI engineering.
• Partner with governance and security to keep AI compliant and trusted.
• Integrate AI with trusted data, service topology and Operational Intelligence.
• Drive transition of validated AI capabilities into sustained operational use with ownership models.
• Define outcome measures for model accuracy and realised business value.

Skills

AI/ML engineering

MLOps / ModelOps

Leadership

Stakeholder engagement

Vendor management

Operational data & observability

Cost optimisation

Cross-domain collaboration

Education

Engineering, Computer Science, Data Science, AI/ML, Telecommunications or Technology degree or equivalent experience

Job description

Optus is seeking an experienced leader for AD, AI Engineering & Model Lifecycle in Melbourne. You will guide the lifecycle of AI capabilities across Network Operations, ensuring trusted and scalable models with strong governance and human oversight.

You will drive a portfolio of AI capabilities, establish standards, and partner with security and governance to ensure compliant, cost-efficient operations while delivering measurable business value.