Chief Engineer - AI Engineering

• Sydney Location / Hybrid Working.  
• Outstanding AI Engineering Leadership Function.  
• Work with some of the brightest minds in the AI space.  

At Westpac, we’re building the future of banking through responsible, human-centred AI. As we continue to grow our inhouse AI capabilities, we are looking for a Chief Engineer – AI Engineering to lead the technical design, engineering excellence and continuous evolution of our enterprise AI Services capability. 

This is a rare opportunity to operate at the intersection of deep hands-on engineering, AI‑first software delivery and enterprise impact—shaping how AI is designed, built, governed and scaled across one of Australia’s largest organisations. 

The Data, Digital & AI (DDAI) function defines and executes the division’s data, digital, and AI strategy—partnering with business leaders to unlock value through advanced analytics, responsible AI, and modern digital platforms.  

Additionally, the team plays a critical role in enabling smarter decisions, improving customer experience, and maintaining strong risk and regulatory standards.  

• Lead the technical design, engineering and continuous improvement of Westpac’s AI Services and AI Engineering capability. 
• Champion and personally operate within an AI‑first software development lifecycle, where we are accountable and set intent and guardrails, and AI helps generate, test, deploy and evidence outcomes. 
• Deliver high‑impact, end‑to‑end engineering outcomes using agentic AI tools alongside modern software, data and platform engineering practices. 
• Establish reusable reference patterns across intent, design, build, verification, deployment and monitoring. 
• Codify standards, guardrails, evidence models and governance‑by‑design patterns to ensure AI is safe, compliant and scalable. 
• Ensure solutions meet enterprise requirements for resilience, security, privacy, Responsible AI, regulatory compliance and operability. 
• Integrate AI Services seamlessly with enterprise platforms, data, channels and delivery systems. 
• Drive automation, observability, self-healing and cost optimisation across AI Services. 
• Coach and uplift engineers, architects and product teams in AI‑powered engineering ways of working. 
• Be accountable for technical quality, architectural integrity, scalability and operational excellence. 

Importantly, this role is both strategic and deeply hands‑on—you’ll set the standard and actively do the work. 

• Highly developed people leadership and stakeholder management expertise as gained in complex corporate enterprise settings.  
• Advanced and deep Senior Staff or Chief Engineer level experience designing and delivering complex systems across cloud, data, integration, API and AI platforms. 
• Tertiary qualifications in a relevant technology discipline.  
• Deep understanding of advanced analytics, ML systems, and emerging agentic AI patterns.  
• Strong hands‑on engineering capability across architecture, coding, testing, CI/CD, IaC, deployment, observability and operations. 
• Deep experience with AI service engineering, including LLMs, RAG, agentic workflows, prompt/context engineering and modern data stores. 
• A strong foundation in DevSecOps, secure‑by‑design engineering, SRE and operational resilience. 
• Demonstrable experience embedding governance, traceability and audit‑ready controls directly into engineering workflows. 
• A passion for coaching, capability uplift and setting engineering standards at scale. 
• Comfort operating in highly regulated environments, balancing innovation with risk, security and compliance. 

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 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!  

To get started, simply click on the APPLY or APPLY NOW button.  

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 out more information and additional contact details by visiting the "People with Disability and/or needing Accessibility Requirements" page on our website.