Chief Engineer
Commonwealth Bank of Australia · Sydney CBD Area
Specific work or activities you will perform:
Lead the modernisation of Operations tech platforms, including legacy system simplification, cloud adoption, resilience uplift, and establishment of engineering standards across software, data, and AI engineering. Provide enterprise-level technical leadership for platform architecture, data governance, AI integration, secure engineering practices, and operational resilience across critical Finance & Risk systems.
Business outcome this work enables:
Drives the resilience, scalability, and reliability of enterprise platforms lead by operations tech teams by establishing modern architecture, standardised engineering practices, strong platform governance, and responsible AI adoption, accelerating delivery while improving operational excellence and business outcomes.
Role Overview:
We are seeking a Chief Engineer to lead the technical strategy, architecture, and engineering standards across Operations technology platforms at CBA. This role is responsible for ensuring our systems are resilient, secure, compliant, and scalable, while supporting critical business capabilities servicing 3000+ internal users.
You will act as the senior-most technical authority across Operation Tech domain, driving modernisation of legacy platforms, uplifting engineering practices, and ensuring alignment with CBA’s enterprise architecture, risk frameworks, and regulatory obligations.
Key Responsibilities:
Technology Strategy & Architecture
- Lead modernisation initiatives, Engineer enterprise-wide platform adoption (cloud adoption, AI implementation, decommissioning legacy systems)
- Ensure alignment with CBA enterprise architecture, data strategy, and platform standards
- Drive AI first mindset and API-first, event-driven, and modular architecture patterns
Engineering Excellence & Resilience
- Establish best practices for high availability, disaster recovery, and operational resilience
- Drive improvements in system reliability, observability, and incident management
- Champion secure engineering practices aligned with CBA cybersecurity standards
- Ensure strong SDLC governance, including CI/CD, automated testing, and release controls
AI, Data & Platform Integrity
- Ensure the accuracy, consistency, lineage, and trustworthiness of enterprise data, enabling secure, high-quality data foundations across platforms and business domains.
- Design and govern AI-ready data architectures, including data lineage, reconciliation, observability, metadata, and controls across upstream and downstream systems.
- Establish responsible AI guardrails by implementing enterprise AI governance, model evaluation, prompt and agent governance, knowledge management, and human oversight to ensure safe, compliant, and explainable AI adoption.
- Build reusable AI and data platform capabilities, including enterprise knowledge layers, vector search, RAG, AI skills, and operational data products that enable scalable agentic solutions and intelligent automation.
- Integrate enterprise data, AI services, and risk, compliance, analytics, and reporting platforms to deliver trusted, governed, and reusable capabilities across the organisation.
- Champion AI engineering best practices, including model lifecycle management, evaluation frameworks, observability, security, and continuous improvement of AI-powered systems.
Leadership & Culture
- Provide technical leadership across multiple engineering teams and domains
- Mentor principal engineers and engineering leaders
- Build a culture of accountability, engineering excellence, and continuous improvement
- Influence hiring, capability uplift, and workforce strategy
Stakeholder Engagement
- Partner with senior leaders across Operation, Financial crime Technology
- Translate complex technical concepts into business and regulatory impact
- Support executive and board-level discussions where required (e.g. risk, resilience, incidents)
Required Qualifications
- 15+ years of engineering experience, with significant time in enterprise-scale or banking environments
- Proven experience leading complex technology platforms
- Deep expertise in distributed systems, data platforms, and cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP)
- Experience working within regulated environments (APRA, Basel frameworks, etc.)
- Demonstrated ability to lead large-scale transformation and modernisation programs
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with Agentic solutions, technology modernization, regulatory reporting.
- Background in Data and microservice architecture, enterprise data platforms
- Experience in platform engineering or core banking transformation
Key Attributes
- Strong technical depth with enterprise-scale thinking
- Risk-aware decision maker with strong governance mindset
- Influential leader comfortable operating at executive level
- Pragmatic approach to balancing legacy constraints with modernisation goals
Success Measures
- Improved resilience and stability of Operations platforms
- Successful delivery of various Operation business outcomes
- Reduction in legacy complexity and technical debt
- High-quality, trusted across the organisation
- Increased engineering maturity, velocity, and talent retention
If you're already part of the Commonwealth Bank Group (including Bankwest, x15ventures), you'll need to apply through Sidekick to submit a valid application. We’re keen to support you with the next step in your career.
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