Principal Software Engineer, Group AI Enablement

Commonwealth Bank of Australia; Sydney; On-site; AUD 210,000 - 270,000; Full time

Job summary

Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney seeks a Principal Software Engineer to lead the technical strategy for Group AI Enablement, shaping enterprise AI capabilities and scalable foundations across agentic AI, RAG, cloud platforms and integrations.

You will drive architecture, connect business needs with engineering patterns, remain hands-on, and mentor engineers while delivering secure, reliable production-grade solutions.

Qualifications

• Experience leading complex engineering initiatives across multiple teams, platforms and stakeholders.
• Proven ability to design distributed, cloud-native systems and enterprise integration patterns.
• Strong software engineering in Python, TypeScript or C#.
• Hands-on with AI/ML tooling and secure, resilient production systems.

Responsibilities

• Define long-term engineering strategy and architecture for enterprise AI capabilities, balancing delivery with scalability and value.
• Shape integration of AI models, agents and knowledge sources with business systems for security and interoperability.
• Lead complex projects from discovery to production with measurable outcomes.
• Build reusable services and reference implementations covering identity, observability and ownership.

Skills

Architectural leadership

Distributed systems

Python/TypeScript/C#

AWS/Azure

RAG pipelines

Security & compliance

Tools

LangChain

LlamaIndex

Kubernetes

Job description

Principal Software Engineer | Group AI Enablement

• Sydney or Melbourne locations

Shape the engineering strategy behind AI capabilities that transform how CommBank works. Lead complex engineering across agentic AI, RAG, cloud platforms and enterprise integrations. Build secure, reliable and reusable AI foundations that scale across the Group.

Do work that matters

Group AI Enablement sits within the Chief AI Office, part of Group Central Technology. Our mission is to help CommBank realise the value of AI by shaping and scaling enterprise capabilities that improve how our people work and the outcomes they deliver.

As Principal Engineer, you'll lead the technical strategy and architectural direction for Group AI Enablement, connecting our enterprise AI ambitions with the engineering foundations needed to deliver them.

Your scope will span multiple teams, platforms and business functions. You'll work with product leaders, Staff Engineers, technology teams and enterprise partners to establish a coherent technical direction, solve complex engineering challenges and create approaches that enable AI capabilities to scale across the Group.

You'll remain hands-on where your expertise has the greatest impact, testing emerging technologies, building reference implementations, validating architectural decisions and solving critical production problems.

See yourself in our team

You’ll join a team focused on moving AI from experimentation to useful, secure and reliable enterprise capability.

In this role, you will:

• Define the long-term engineering strategy and architecture for enterprise AI capabilities, balancing immediate delivery with scalability, resilience and commercial value.
• Shape how AI models, agents, knowledge sources and business systems integrate, establishing patterns that enable security, interoperability and reuse.
• Lead complex engineering initiatives from discovery and experimentation through to production.
• Build reusable services, reference implementations and engineering patterns covering identity, permissions, observability and operational ownership.
• Establish rigorous approaches to evaluating RAG and agentic systems using representative business tasks and measurable success criteria.
• Engineer for trust by translating cyber security, privacy, risk and Responsible AI requirements into practical engineering controls.
• Remain hands-on through prototyping, software design and review, technical investigations and resolution of critical production challenges.
• Mentor senior technical practitioners and influence engineering decisions across organisational boundaries.

We're interested in hearing from people who:

You're an experienced engineering leader who combines strong architectural judgement with deep hands-on software engineering capability. You can move comfortably between strategic technical decisions and implementation detail, navigate ambiguity and bring multiple teams together around a clear engineering direction.

Experience across several of the following will set you up for success:

• Leading complex engineering initiatives across multiple teams, platforms and stakeholders.
• Designing distributed, cloud-native systems and enterprise integration patterns, with strong AWS and/or Microsoft Azure experience.
• Building retrieval-augmented generation solutions using LlamaIndex, LangChain or comparable frameworks, including ingestion, retrieval, grounding, permissions and evaluation.
• Designing or building agentic systems involving tool use, orchestration, state management, human approval and failure recovery.
• Strong software engineering capability using Python, TypeScript, C# or comparable modern languages.
• DevSecOps, infrastructure as code, automated testing, CI/CD, observability and operational resilience.
• Evaluating AI systems across quality, safety, latency, reliability and cost.
• Working with product and business stakeholders to connect engineering decisions with measurable customer, employee or productivity outcomes.
• Influencing senior stakeholders and mentoring experienced engineers without relying on formal authority.

A curiosity for emerging AI technology and a practical approach to experimentation will be important. You'll be comfortable testing new technologies, understanding their limitations and determining what is genuinely ready for enterprise-scale use.

Working with us

At CommBank, we're committed to creating an accessible, inclusive and respectful workplace. If you require support or adjustments, please let us know. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and we're particularly committed to making a positive difference for Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Peoples. For support please contact 1800 989 696.