Principal AI Platform Engineer

Qantas Airways; Sydney; Hybrid; AUD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Staff travel

Hybrid work

Parental leave

Rewards program

Job summary

Qantas Airways is seeking a Principal AI Platform Engineer to lead the design and delivery of the AI platform for the Group. You will treat the platform as a product, providing self-service onboarding, guardrails, and guardrails so teams can onboard and operate AI workloads with minimal platform team intervention.

This senior, hands-on role includes writing production code, building infrastructure as code, and operating the platform on AWS SageMaker/Bedrock.

Qualifications

• 8+ years designing, building and operating scalable data and AI/ML platforms in large enterprises.
• Bachelor's degree or higher in computer science, software engineering, data science or related field.
• Deep hands-on cloud-native engineering on AWS, including SageMaker, Bedrock, S3, IAM with Python and IaC tooling.
• Proven experience designing secure, governed and cost-optimised AI/ML platforms with enterprise security and monitoring.
• Experience establishing platform engineering practices within an enterprise architecture and governance framework.
• Hands-on MLOps capability (pipelines, model registry, feature/artifact management) and GenAI capability (prompt engineering, LLM orchestration).
• Platform as a product mindset: self-service, guardrails, and treating internal engineers as customers.
• Able to translate high-level architecture and product requirements into detailed designs and backlog items.
• Excellent written and verbal communication to influence in a matrixed organisation.
• Track record delivering complex initiatives with autonomy while uplifting team capability.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical design of the AI platform and set engineering standards and patterns.
• Lift capability of engineers through design reviews, pairing and mentoring.
• Write production code and build infrastructure as code and CI/CD pipelines.
• Operationalise the platform on AWS SageMaker and Bedrock with the team.
• Ensure security, observability, cost transparency and guardrails from the start.

Skills

Cloud-native engineering

AWS SageMaker

Python

Terraform

CI/CD pipelines

MLOps

GenAI

Platform as a product

Education

Bachelor's degree or higher in computer science, software engineering, data science or related field

Tools

SageMaker

Bedrock

S3

IAM

Job description

• Great opportunity to add significant value to Technology, AI & Transformation for the Qantas Group!
• Permanent opportunity based at our Mascot office (hybrid working available)
• Staff Travel Benefits from Day One

At Qantas, we represent Australia to the world. Our diverse country is known for its unique spirit, mateship, and a can-do attitude. Together we’re strong and resilient, and we work hard to make sure we’re always at our best.

As the Principal AI Platform Engineer you'll be part of the team building the AI platform that the rest of the Group builds on. That means treating the platform as a product and the engineers who use it as your customers: paved paths that make the right way the easy way, self-service onboarding, and guardrails and guidance instead of gatekeeping. Success is measured by adoption and by how rarely teams need you. Data scientists, ML engineers and application teams should be able to onboard, build, deploy and operate their own AI workloads in production without platform team intervention.

You'll be the senior technical voice in the squad. You'll own the technical design of the platform, set the engineering standards and patterns the team builds to, and lift the capability of the engineers around you through design review, pairing and mentoring. It's also a hands-on role: you'll be writing production code, building infrastructure as code and CI/CD pipelines, and operationalising the platform on AWS SageMaker and Bedrock, working alongside the team rather than directing delivery from a distance.

You'll make the platform secure, observable, reproducible and cost-transparent, so teams can see their own consumption and troubleshoot their own workloads, with responsible AI, privacy and security controls built in from the start rather than bolted on. You'll work in a small cross-functional squad led by a Product Owner, partnering with the AI Solution Architect, Cloud Engineer and AI Platform Engineers.

What you will bring:

• 8+ years designing, building and operating scalable data and AI/ML platforms in large enterprise environments, including demonstrated technical leadership on complex platform initiatives
• Bachelor's degree or higher in computer science, software engineering, data science or a related field
• Deep hands-on cloud-native engineering on AWS, including SageMaker, Bedrock, S3, IAM and related DevOps tooling, with Python, infrastructure as code (Terraform or CloudFormation) and CI/CD pipelines
• Proven experience designing, implementing and managing secure, governed and cost-optimised AI/ML platforms, with a strong understanding of enterprise security, monitoring and access control frameworks
• Experience establishing platform engineering practices and standards within an enterprise architecture and governance framework: defining patterns, creating reusable templates and building developer experience tooling
• Hands-on production MLOps capability (pipelines, model registry, feature and artefact management, serving, monitoring) and GenAI capability (prompt engineering, LLM orchestration, RAG, evaluation, guardrails)
• Platform as a product mindset: self-service, golden paths, guardrails over gatekeeping, and treating internal engineers as customers
• Able to translate high-level architecture and product requirements into detailed technical designs, implementation plans and actionable backlog items
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, able to communicate highly technical information to non-technical stakeholders and influence without authority in a highly matrixed organisation
• Track record of delivering complex technical initiatives with a high degree of autonomy, while mentoring and uplifting team capability, navigating ambiguity, shifting priorities and operational dependencies

Why Qantas?

You’ll join a team where creativity and passion are encouraged. Our people come together to allow us to dream big and deliver successfully.

There are many different opportunities across our team, which means you’ll be able to grow both personally and professionally at Qantas. Your development is a priority for us – so that you can maintain the high standards our customers have come to expect and can continue to develop over time. You’ll be supported from day 1 with on-the-job training and coaching as well as our formal training opportunities. While you may start in this role, we’ve got a great track record of supporting our people to take their career in so many different directions, the destinations are endless.

The Qantas employee benefits program offers amazing benefits that extend well beyond travel:

• We love to travel: Enjoy heavily discounted air travel within Australia and across the globe, both for you and your family and friends, as well as exclusive deals on accommodation and holidays.
• We have flexible leave options: Make use of leave and flexible working opportunities including 18 weeks paid parental leave (plus superannuation payments on all paid and unpaid parental leave until your child turns 1) and additional purchased leave options for eligible employees.
• We’ll give you access to thousands of rewards: Through our partnerships we can offer you discounts across shopping, food and wine, insurance, health and wellbeing, leisure and entertainment. You can also take advantage of our salary packaging program including motor vehicles, eligible portable electronic devices and professional memberships.

We’ll support your wellbeing: Whether it’s learning to better support your own and others’ mental health, our interactive wellbeing app or your very own tailored nutrition plan.

Qantas is an Equal Opportunity Employer, so by coming to work for us, you’ll be part of an organisation that encourages diversity, supports charities and environmental initiatives. We encourage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander – and people from every other kind of background – to apply.

We are committed to creating an inclusive workplace. Talk to us about how this job could be flexible for you.