Principal Engineer - Cloud & Platform Engineering

Westpac; Sydney; On-site; AUD 210,000 - 270,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Mortgage rates for employees

Flexible work arrangements

Wellbeing & culture leave

Learning & development opportunities

Volunteer programs

Job summary

Westpac is seeking a Principal Engineer in Sydney to provide technical leadership and architectural governance for large-scale banking technology initiatives.

You will guide engineering squads, make critical design decisions, and ensure secure, observable, and scalable delivery while fostering automation and platform tooling adoption across the organization.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of experience across software engineering, architecture or platform engineering, including enterprise application modernisation and cloud-native architecture.

Responsibilities

• Lead complex engineering design and technical decisions.
• Review critical designs and high-risk changes; resolve cross-team dependencies.
• Develop reusable engineering patterns and guardrails; support technical debt prioritisation.
• Coach Senior Engineers on secure and reliable practices.
• Drive adoption of automation, testing, observability, CI/CD and platform tooling.
• Advance cloud security, governance, resilience and cost optimisation.

Skills

Technical leadership

Cloud-native architecture

Risk management

Cross-team collaboration

Secure software delivery

Tools

AWS architecture

Kubernetes

Terraform

OpenTofu

Bicep

REST/GraphQL

Kafka

LangGraph

CrewAI

AutoGen

Vector databases

GitHub Actions

CI/CD

Job description

Sydney, NSW, Australia

Job Description

Create your best future and join Westpac as a Principal Engineer.

What’s the role?

Reporting to the Chief Engineer, Institutional Banking and Capital Solutions Technology, this Principal Engineer role will provide technical leadership and architectural governance to enable high-quality engineering outcomes at scale. Through clear technical decision-making, consistent engineering practices and proactive risk management, the role will help reduce delivery friction and rework, strengthen resilience and operability, and improve the effectiveness and autonomy of engineering squads.

This role will be responsible for leading complex engineering design and technical decisions, reviewing critical designs and high-risk changes, and resolving cross-team technical dependencies. It will also develop reusable engineering patterns and guardrails, support technical debt prioritisation, coach Senior Engineers on secure and reliable engineering practices, and drive the adoption of automation, testing, observability, CI/CD and platform tooling.

What do I need?

• 15+ years of experience across software engineering, architecture or platform engineering, including enterprise application modernisation and cloud-native architecture.
• Strong expertise in AWS architecture, cloud-native design, migration and modernisation, including microservices, serverless, Kubernetes, resilience and cloud governance.
• Strong experience with API and integration architecture, including API-first design, REST/GraphQL, event-driven systems, Kafka and enterprise integration patterns.
• Experience designing and embedding Generative AI capabilities, including RAG, agentic systems, AWS AgentCore, MCP, agent orchestration frameworks such as LangGraph, CrewAI or AutoGen, and vector databases.
• Strong experience with Infrastructure as Code and automation using technologies such as Terraform, OpenTofu or Bicep.
• Strong platform engineering and DevOps experience across CI/CD, GitHub Actions, automated testing, observability and secure software delivery.
• Experience with cloud security, governance, resilience, disaster recovery and cost optimisation.
• Understanding of AI governance and responsible AI controls.

Why join us?

• Special offers on banking products and discounts from top brands, including generous employee-only mortgage rates!
• Flexible work arrangements to help you achieve a greater work/life balance, and a variety of leave options including Culture, Lifestyle and Wellbeing leave.
• Tailored learning and development opportunities to help your grow your career within the bank.
• Lots of opportunities to ‘give back’ to the Community by getting involved in our many volunteering initiatives.

Create your future today

We’re all about creating a supportive and inclusive community. We welcome everyone – no matter your age, gender, background, or abilities. We also provide additional support to welcome our veterans, Indigenous Australians and neurodiverse community.

If you need any adjustments during the recruitment process, you can find more information and contact details on our FAQs and how to contact us page , under the ‘Diversity, sustainability and flexibility’ section.

We may close this job advertisement earlier than the advertised closing date if suitable candidates are identified. We encourage you to apply as soon as possible.