Principal Engineer, AI & Emerging Technology

TAL Australia; Sydney; On-site; AUD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

TAL Australia seeks a Principal Engineer, AI & Emerging Technology to lead the enterprise's AI initiatives, architectures, and governance. You will drive generative AI and agentic systems across delivery teams, shaping scalable, secure solutions for a regulated life insurer.

You will set standards, guide integration patterns, and raise engineering maturity with CI/CD, testing and observability, aligning with TAL's technology strategy and risk controls.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, AI, or related field. Advanced degrees preferred.
• 10+ years in software, AI/ML or data engineering roles, with a sustained record of designing and shipping complex AI solutions to production at scale.
• Proven experience as a principal-level or senior technical leader, setting architecture and standards across multiple teams and leading through influence.
• Deep expertise in generative AI, LLM-based and agentic systems, and MLOps/LLMOps practices including evaluation, monitoring and safe deployment.
• Extensive hands‑on experience with major cloud platforms (Azure preferred), including AI/ML services, APIs, containers and modern integration patterns.
• Expert proficiency in Python and modern engineering practices; fluency with AI-assisted and agentic software development workflows.
• Deep understanding of CI/CD, automated testing, observability and software engineering principles, and experience embedding these across teams.

Responsibilities

• Set the technical direction and reference architectures for AI solutions across the portfolio, covering generative AI, agentic systems, ML and the platforms that support them.
• Own critical design decisions in partnership with Architecture, ensuring solutions align with TAL's technology strategy, platform foundations and integration patterns.
• Provide technical assurance on high-risk designs, acting as the escalation point for complex engineering trade-offs.
• Work directly with delivery pods on complex engineering problems e.g. complex integrations, agentic workflows, performance, reliability and evaluation.
• Define and evolve engineering standards, patterns and best practices for AI development, including agentic software development, CI/CD, testing and observability.
• Champion reuse of shared AI platforms, gateways and governance tooling, and contribute to their design and evolution.
• Identify and address technical risks including model risk, data privacy, security and drift, partnering with Cyber and Risk on controls.
• Stay at the forefront of advancements in AI, machine learning and agentic engineering, and evaluate new technologies and approaches that can advance TAL's AI capabilities.

Skills

Python

CI/CD

Observability

AI/ML

Cloud platforms

Azure

LLMOps

Agentic systems

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, AI, or related field

Tools

Azure

APIs

Containers

Job description

TAL Australia seeks a Principal Engineer, AI & Emerging Technology to lead the enterprise's AI initiatives, architectures, and governance. You will drive generative AI and agentic systems across delivery teams, shaping scalable, secure solutions for a regulated life insurer.

You will set standards, guide integration patterns, and raise engineering maturity with CI/CD, testing and observability, aligning with TAL's technology strategy and risk controls.