Lead/Staff AI Engineer

Preacta; City of Melbourne; Hybrid; AUD 270,000 - 330,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work arrangement

Top-compensation package up to AUD 300

Biannual offsites across Australia

Access to best-in-class AI tooling

Clear development and career growth

Job summary

Preact is seeking a Lead/Staff AI Engineer in Australia to own the tooling layer between engineers and AI coding agents. You will architect and hardened agent-authored code, while shaping technical direction and building an in-house AI capability from the ground up.

You will lead secure, scalable delivery with strong Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL expertise, and a track record in developer tooling that others rely on. Hybrid work across Australia offered and a significant growth opportunity.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of software engineering experience with senior-level production systems.
• Strong Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL experience.
• Hands-on experience with AI coding agents in a real codebase.

Responsibilities

• Architect and build the coding agent harness, including MCP servers, tooling, integrations and workflows.
• Prepare the core Ruby on Rails codebase for agent-authored changes with clear module boundaries and strong tests.
• Design evaluation frameworks to measure agent performance and workflow effectiveness at scale.
• Lead investigation of failures and performance issues and feed learnings back into the harness and agents.
• Own security, privacy and guardrail controls and automated checks that stop agent changes from regressing systems.
• Lead incident response for coding agent and supporting systems including triage and root cause analysis.
• Build reusable tooling and drive adoption of AI-native development practices across teams.

Skills

Ruby on Rails

PostgreSQL

AI coding agents

Developer tooling

MCP servers

AWS

Terraform

Incident response

Financial services domain

Tools

Terraform

AWS

Job description

We're hiring a Lead/Staff AI Engineer to join an Australian fintech that's building its entire AI capability in-house, from the ground up.

This is a rare chance to own the tooling layer between engineers and the AI coding agents they build with, not just use AI tools, but architect and harden the systems that make agent-authored code safe to ship. The business processes significant transaction volumes for customers across Australia and is investing heavily in AI as its next major growth lever, under experienced fintech leadership with a track record of scaling data and AI capability at some of the country's best-known payments businesses.

This is a senior role reporting to the Head of AI Engineering, with genuine scope to shape technical direction, not just execute within an existing framework. The scope runs above the title, everyone here is expected to operate a level beyond their role.

What You'll Be Working On

• Architecting and building the coding agent harness, including MCP servers, tooling, integrations, conventions and workflows
• Preparing the core Ruby on Rails codebase for agent-authored change: clear module boundaries, strong test coverage, and interfaces that contain blast radius
• Designing evaluation frameworks and feedback loops to measure agent performance and workflow effectiveness at scale
• Leading investigation of failures and performance issues, feeding learnings back into the harness and agents
• Owning security, privacy and guardrail controls, and the automated checks and rollback paths that stop agent-authored change regressing critical systems
• Leading incident response for the coding agent and supporting systems: triage, recovery, root cause analysis
• Building reusable tooling and driving adoption of AI-native development practices across engineering teams

Tech Environment

• Backend: Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL

What We're Looking For

• 5+ years of software engineering experience, with substantial time spent shipping and supporting production systems at senior level
• Strong Ruby on Rails and PostgreSQL experience
• Hands-on experience using AI coding agents in a real codebase, with a clear, opinionated view of where they help and where they don't
• A track record building developer tooling, internal platforms, or developer experience work that other engineers depended on
• Practical experience with MCP servers, tool integrations, or comparable agent tooling
• Solid AWS experience and comfort with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform)
• Direct experience owning incident response end to end: triage, containment, recovery, and writing up root cause afterwards
• Experience working in financial services or another domain where reliability genuinely matters

What's On Offer

• Permanent role, total comp package up to $300K for the right candidate
• Hybrid working arrangement
• Build an AI-native fintech stack from the ground up
• Access to best-in-class AI tooling, invested in properly so you can move fast
• Clear development and career progression opportunities
• Biannual offsites around Australia to foster cooperation with colleagues in other states