Chief Engineer

Commonwealth Bank

About the Role

At Commonwealth Bank (CBA), technology and engineering are central to creating better customer and colleague experiences and building a simpler, safer, and more innovative bank. As a Chief Engineer, you will be a senior technical leader, tackling complex engineering challenges and shaping the future of engineering across the organization. You will set long-term technical direction, influence architectural strategy, and drive engineering excellence in large-scale, complex technology environments. This role combines deep technical expertise with enterprise influence, challenging conventional thinking, shaping technology decisions, and helping engineers build resilient, secure, and scalable solutions.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and influence long-term engineering and architectural direction across complex technology domains.
• Solve critical technical challenges requiring deep engineering expertise and sound judgment.
• Lead large-scale technical initiatives spanning multiple teams and technology domains.
• Establish engineering standards and patterns for software design, architecture, and engineering at scale.
• Champion DevSecOps, CI/CD, automated testing, and engineering automation.
• Strengthen reliability and observability, including resilient design, monitoring, recovery, and operational excellence.
• Embed security, quality, and risk thinking throughout the engineering lifecycle.
• Accelerate AI-powered engineering, applying AI thoughtfully and responsibly across software engineering.
• Constructively challenge complex solutions to identify architectural gaps, risks, and opportunities.
• Balance innovation and experimentation with scalability, resilience, customer impact, and long-term sustainability.
• Advise senior leaders on the technical implications and trade-offs of strategic technology decisions.
• Translate complex engineering concepts into clear, meaningful insights for technical and non-technical audiences.
• Coach and mentor engineers and technology leaders, creating a culture of continuous learning and technical excellence.
• Build engineering communities that encourage knowledge sharing, collaboration, and ownership.
• Represent and strengthen CBA’s engineering identity and reputation.

Transformation Horizons

• Shape the future: Define long-term engineering vision, architecture, and technology strategy, identifying opportunities to apply emerging technology and AI.
• Raise the engineering bar: Advance software design, engineering at scale, DevSecOps, automated testing, reliability, observability, security, and modern delivery practices.
• Grow engineering capability: Coach engineers, share knowledge, create reusable patterns, and enable teams to make better technical decisions independently.

Requirements & Tech Stack

• Experience as a Chief Engineer, Principal Engineer, Distinguished Engineer, or senior technology leader operating in large and complex technology environments.
• Exceptional depth in software design and architecture, complemented by strong computer science and engineering fundamentals.
• Experience designing and building large-scale, reliable, and secure software systems.
• Strong knowledge of modern DevOps/DevSecOps, CI/CD, automated testing, reliability, and observability practices.
• Ability to combine strategic technology thinking with hands-on engineering judgment.
• Understanding of the opportunities presented by AI and data, particularly their potential to transform engineering.
• Ability to navigate ambiguity, simplify complex problems, and create clear technical direction.
• Strong judgment and ability to balance innovation, customer outcomes, engineering quality, and risk.
• Ability to influence across multiple teams and domains without relying on formal authority.
• Courage to constructively challenge established thinking and ask difficult technical questions.
• Natural curiosity and commitment to continuous learning.
• Deep care for coaching, mentoring, and growing engineers.
• Ability to communicate sophisticated technical ideas clearly to engineers, business stakeholders, and senior leaders.
• Customer-first mindset and ability to connect engineering choices to meaningful customer and business outcomes.

Nice to Have Experience

• Engineering leadership within large-scale, regulated, or highly complex technology environments.
• Designing and evolving distributed, cloud-based, and high-availability systems.
• Modern software architecture, APIs, event-driven systems, and scalable engineering patterns.
• Cloud technologies, containerisation, and infrastructure as code.
• AI-assisted software engineering and engineering productivity tooling.
• Enterprise-scale DevSecOps, test automation, observability, and reliability engineering.
• Leading significant technical transformation across multiple platforms, teams, or technology domains.