Principal Engineer - AI Innovation Office

Westpac Group; Sydney; On-site; AUD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Westpac Group’s Chief AI Innovation Office seeks a hands-on technical authority to shape enterprise AI engineering initiatives in production, across domains. You will design, implement, and standardize scalable AI platforms, ensuring secure, observable, and reusable patterns for multiple teams while balancing quality, latency, cost, and risk.

You will stay hands-on, collaborate with engineers, and coach across product, architecture, data, and security teams to push safe, production-ready AI

Qualifications

• Proven delivery and operation of AI/ML/LLM-enabled systems in production.
• Hands-on AI engineering experience in large, complex, or regulated environments.
• Exceptional stakeholder management and ability to influence across multiple teams without formal authority.
• Strong Python, APIs, distributed systems, cloud, containers, IaC, CI/CD, and secure engineering capabilities.
• Practical expertise in LLMs, RAG, embeddings, agents, orchestration, evaluation, and AI observability.

Responsibilities

• Architect and engineer production-grade LLM, RAG, plus agentic and machine-learning systems.
• Stay hands-on: write and review code, test assumptions, lead investigations and unblock delivery.
• Create reusable platforms, reference architectures, guardrails, and golden paths for multiple teams.
• Balance model quality, latency, resilience, cost, security, privacy, risk, and customer impact.
• Embed evaluation, observability, testing, responsible AI, and operational readiness from day one.
• Coach engineers through code reviews, design reviews, pairing, and practical technical leadership.
• Influence engineering, product, architecture, data, security, and risk partners without formal authority.

Skills

Lead / architectural influence

Production AI/ML systems

Stakeholder management

AI engineering in regulated env

Big-picture problem solving

Standards and governance

Tools

Python

APIs

Distributed systems

Cloud

Containers

Infrastructure as Code

CI/CD

Security engineering

Job description

Opportunity is knocking …

The Chief AI Innovation Office within Data, Digital & AI (DDAI) is seeking a hands-on technical authority to shape Westpac’s most important AI engineering initiatives.

You will work across teams and domains, setting directions, solving complex delivery challenges, and creating reusable approaches that help our engineers move safely from ideas to production.

It’s an exciting time for Westpac as youhelp shape enterprise AI engineering at a pivotal point in its evolution, with scope across production systems, reusable platforms, agentic engineering, responsible AI, and developer experience.

You’ll be a key contributor who willlift capability across teams and turn strategic AI priorities into secure, scalable production systems.

• Architect and engineer production-grade LLM, RAG, plus agentic and machine-learning systems.
• Stay hands-on: write and review code, test assumptions, lead investigations and unblock critical delivery.
• Create reusable platforms, reference architectures, guardrails, and golden paths that accelerate multiple teams.
• Balance model quality, latency, resilience, cost, security, privacy, risk, and customer impact.
• Embed evaluation, observability, testing, responsible AI, and operational readiness from day one.
• Coach engineers through code reviews, design reviews, pairing, and practical technical leadership.
• Influence engineering, product, architecture, data, security, and risk partners without relying on formal authority.

What you will bringto the table …

• Deep, hands-on AI engineering experience in a large, complex, or regulated environment.
• Principal, Staff, Lead or equivalent experience influencing across teams and technical domains.
• Proven delivery and operation of AI, ML or LLM-enabled systems at production scale, not only proofs of concept.
• Strong Python, APIs, distributed systems, cloud, containers, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, and secure engineering capability.
• Practical expertise in LLMs, RAG, embeddings, agents, orchestration, evaluation, context management, and AI observability.
• Exceptional business acumen and outstanding stakeholder management skills at all levels.
• Sound judgement across AI failure modes, responsible AI, security, privacy, reliability, and operational risk.
• A track record of simplifying ambiguity, setting adopted standards and growing engineering capability.

Your impact:

• AI initiatives move beyond prototypes into trusted enterprise services.
• Teams deliver faster through reusable patterns.
• Risks are designed out early.
• Engineers grow stronger because you leave behind better judgement, platforms, and practices.

Does this sound like you?

We’re all about creating a supportive and inclusive community. We welcome everyone – no matter your age, gender, background, or abilities. We also provide added 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.