Principal Engineer - AI Innovation Office

Westpac; Sydney; Hybrid; AUD 220,000 - 300,000; Full time

Job summary

Westpac is seeking a hands-on Chief AI Innovation Office leader in Sydney. The role shapes enterprise AI engineering and drives production-grade LLM, RAG, and agentic systems at scale in a hybrid work setup.

You will set directions across teams, build reusable platforms, guardrails, and golden paths, balancing cost, latency, security, privacy, and risk from day one. Engage stakeholders and lead with practical technical leadership.

Qualifications

• Hands-on AI engineering experience in large, complex, or regulated environments.
• Proven delivery and operation of AI, ML or LLM-enabled systems at production scale.
• 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.

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 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.

Skills

Python

APIs

Distributed systems

Cloud

Containers

Infrastructure as code

CI/CD

Secure engineering

AI governance

Tools

LLM

RAG

Embeddings

Agents

Orchestration

AI observability

Job description

Australia

Job Description

• Sydney Based Role / Hybrid Working

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 our website .