Principal Engineer - Cloud & Platform Engineering

Westpac Bank; Sydney; On-site; AUD 240,000 - 360,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Special offers on banking products and

Flexible work arrangements

Learning and development opportunities

Community volunteering initiatives

Job summary

Westpac Bank in Sydney is seeking a Principal Engineer to provide technical leadership and architectural governance at scale. Reporting to the Chief Engineer, Institutional Banking and Capital Solutions Technology, this role will guide engineering squads toward resilient, observable, and automated delivery.

You will lead complex design decisions, promote API-first design and CI/CD practices, embed Generative AI capabilities, and coach engineers on secure and reliable software delivery while

Qualifications

• 15+ years in software engineering, architecture or platform engineering.
• Expertise in AWS architecture and cloud-native design.
• Experience with API-first design and Kafka integration.
• Proven ability to manage complex cross-team dependencies.
• Knowledge of Generative AI, RAG, agentic systems.
• Strong IaC and automation skills (Terraform/OpenTofu/Bicep).
• DevOps, CI/CD, testing, observability and platform tooling.
• Understanding AI governance and responsible AI controls.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership and architectural governance.
• Lead complex engineering design and critical decisions.
• Review high-risk designs and cross-team dependencies.
• Develop reusable patterns and guardrails.
• Coach engineers on secure and reliable practices.
• Drive automation, testing, observability, and CI/CD.
• Support debt prioritisation and cost optimisation.

Skills

AWS Architecture

Cloud-Native Design

Microservices

Serverless

Kubernetes

API-First Design

Event-Driven Systems

Generative AI

RAG

Agentic Systems

AI Governance

Platform Engineering

DevOps

Security & Resilience

Cost Optimisation

Tools

Terraform

OpenTofu

Bicep

GitHub Actions

CI/CD Pipelines

Observability Tools

Vector Databases

AgentCore

LangGraph

CrewAI

AutoGen

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.

We’re obsessed with becoming our customers' #1 banking partner for life and we’re looking for people who are passionate about helping us achieve that goal. In return, we’re committed to making Westpac the best place to work in the country. Here are just a few of the ways we’re already doing that:

• 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.