JOB DETAILS
Principal Engineer
CompanyWestpac Group
LocationSydney
Work ModeOn Site
PostedAugust 24, 2026
About The Company
From rescue helicopters to signing the Equator Principles, from paying super during parental leave to adding 'Touch ID' biometric technology to our banking apps and being first on the scene with a helping hand in times of crisis... we have a proud history of stepping up to be first for our customers, communities and people. As Australia’s first bank and Australia’s first company we put service at the heart of everything we do and our people are our priority.
We've grown up as a company and expanded both in Australia and throughout Asia, the United Kingdom and the United States. Now we are made up of your favourite financial institution names including Westpac, BankSA, St.George Bank, BT Financial Group, RAMs and Bank of Melbourne, a change of job doesn’t mean a change of employer at Westpac Group.
We've made a commitment to put our customers first in everything we do. This means creating fundamentally superior customer experiences for each customer, every time. We promise that when you meet with someone from Westpac Group, you'll be touched by their genuine dedication to helping our customers prosper and grow.
Westpac Group acknowledges the traditional owners as the custodians of this land, recognising their connection to land, waters and community. We pay our respects to Australia's First Peoples, and to their Elders, past and present.
About the Role
Create your best future as a Principal Engineer.
What’s the role?
Reporting to the Chief Engineer, you'll lead the design and evolution of the engineering capability at Westpac. Working across cloud, Kubernetes, developer platforms, CI/CD, identity, observability and automation, you'll build secure, scalable foundations that enable teams to move faster and deliver with confidence. This is a deeply hands-on technical leadership role. You'll work across architecture, code and operations, influence technical direction, guide teams through complex trade-offs and raise the bar for engineering excellence across the organisation. You'll play a key role in evolving the SDLC into an AI-powered, agentic engineering ecosystem, building the platforms, workflows and guardrails that help teams build, deploy and operate software more effectively.
Your responsibilities will include:
Build Platform Capabilities
• Design and build reusable platform services, APIs, tooling and automation.
• Develop and evolve internal developer platforms and self-service capabilities.
• Simplify complex engineering problems through software and automation.
Lead Technical Direction
• Design and build agentic-first, modern engineering SDLC
• Help define architecture, engineering standards and platform strategy.
• Balance reliability, security, scalability, cost and developer experience.
Drive Operational Excellence
• Define SLOs, operational practices and recovery capabilities.
• Lead incident investigations and drive continuous improvement.
• Embed security and compliance into delivery pipelines and platform services.
Multiply Engineering Impact
• Partner with product, engineering, security and architecture leaders.
• Convert recurring team needs into reusable platform products.
• Mentor engineers and contribute to the broader engineering practice.
What do I need?
To be successful in this role, you will have experience designing, building and operating large-scale platform or internal developer platforms, including:
- Public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure or GCP)
- Kubernetes, Docker and cloud-native technologies
- Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/OpenTofu/Ansible)
- GitOps (Argo CD, Flux)
- CI/CD platforms, GitHub Enterprise and Harness
- Observability platforms (Prometheus, OpenTelemetry or similar)
- API-first and distributed systems design
- Software engineering capability, ideally with Go, Rust or TypeScript.
- Experience building platform software, automation, CLIs or developer tooling.
- Strong debugging, reliability and systems-thinking skills.
- Ability to operate comfortably from architecture through to production support.
- Strong understanding of AI-native engineering practices, agentic systems and platform architectures that enable an AI-powered SDLC.
- Understanding of security engineering principles and software supply chain controls
Why join us?
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
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 more information and contact details on our FAQs and how to contact us page, under the ‘Diversity, sustainability and flexibility’ section.
We may close this job advertisement earlier than the advertised closing date if suitable candidates are identified. We encourage you to apply as soon as possible.
Key Skills
Cloud platformsKubernetesDockerInfrastructure as codeTerraformGitOpsCI/CDObservabilityAPI designDistributed systemsGoRustTypeScriptAutomationSystems thinkingSecurity engineering
Categories
TechnologySoftwareEngineeringManagement & LeadershipFinance & Accounting
Benefits
Banking product discountsMortgage rate discountsFlexible work arrangementsCulture leaveLifestyle leaveWellbeing leaveLearning and development opportunitiesVolunteering initiatives
Job Information
📋Core Responsibilities
You will lead the design and evolution of engineering capabilities, building secure and scalable platforms while driving operational excellence. Additionally, you will mentor engineers and partner with leadership to convert team needs into reusable platform products.
📋Job Type
full time
📊Experience Level
10+
💼Company Size
15028
📊Visa Sponsorship
No
💼Language
English
🏢Working Hours
40 hours
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