Chief Engineer

Working with us:

At CommBank, we never lose sight of the role we play in support our customers’ financial wellbeing. Our focus is to help people and businesses move forward, make better financial decisions and achieve their goals. In this role, you will help engineer one of the most important shifts in how Business Bank supports customers: moving from fragmented service interactions to intelligent, connected and trusted customer outcomes.

We are looking for someone who can lead with judgement, curiosity and ownership; someone who can bring people with them through complex change; and someone who wants to build technology that customers and colleagues can rely on when it matters.

Job Title: Chief Engineer

Location: Bengaluru

Do work that matters:

At Commonwealth Bank of Australia, technology and engineering are at the heart of how we create better experiences for our customers and colleagues and build a simpler, safer and more innovative bank.

As a Chief Engineer, you will be one of our most senior technical leaders, solving some of CBA’s most complex engineering challenges and helping shape the future of engineering across the organisation.

You will set long-term technical direction, influence architectural strategy and drive engineering excellence across large-scale, complex technology environments. From software architecture and engineering at scale to DevOps, reliability, security, quality and AI-powered engineering, you will help create the foundations that enable our teams to build and operate technology safely, efficiently and at scale.

This is more than an architecture role. You will combine deep technical expertise with enterprise influence, challenging conventional thinking, shaping technology decisions and helping engineers turn ambitious ideas into resilient, secure and scalable solutions.

See yourself in our team

As a Chief Engineer, you will work across engineering, product, architecture, data, AI, cyber, operations and risk to tackle challenges that extend beyond individual teams or platforms.

You will move comfortably between strategy and engineering detail. One day you may be influencing CBA’s technology direction with senior leaders; the next you may be challenging a complex architecture, improving engineering patterns or helping teams solve a difficult reliability, security or scalability problem.

Just as importantly, you will invest in our engineering community. You will coach and mentor engineers, encourage curiosity and continuous learning, create space for constructive challenge and help build a culture where great engineering can thrive.

The role spans three transformation horizons:

• Shape the future by defining long-term engineering vision, architecture and technology strategy and identifying opportunities to apply emerging technology and AI.
• Raise the engineering bar by advancing software design, engineering at scale, DevSecOps, automated testing, reliability, observability, security and modern delivery practices.
• Grow engineering capability by coaching engineers, sharing knowledge, creating reusable patterns and enabling teams to make better technical decisions independently.

Your impact and contribution

• Your impact will extend far beyond a single platform or programme.
• You will tackle critical and sometimes intractable engineering problems, balancing immediate business and customer needs with CBA’s longer-term technology ambitions.
• You will help translate architectural vision into engineering reality, establishing patterns and guardrails that enable teams to move faster without compromising quality, resilience, security or risk management.
• You will also play an important role in CBA’s evolution towards AI-powered engineering, helping teams use AI responsibly to enhance engineering productivity, improve decision-making and rethink how software is designed, built, tested and operated.
• Above all, you will make other engineers better. Through coaching, technical leadership and constructive challenge, you will help create an environment where engineers can learn, experiment, take ownership and deliver their best work.

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 judgement.
• 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.

We are interested in hearing from people who:

• Are an experienced Chief Engineer, Principal Engineer, Distinguished Engineer or senior technology leader who has operated in large and complex technology environments.
• Have exceptional depth in software design and architecture, complemented by strong computer science and engineering fundamentals.
• Bring experience designing and building large-scale, reliable and secure software systems.
• Have strong knowledge of modern DevOps/DevSecOps, CI/CD, automated testing, reliability and observability practices.
• Can combine strategic technology thinking with hands-on engineering judgement.
• Understand the opportunities presented by AI and data, particularly their potential to transform engineering.
• Can navigate ambiguity, simplify complex problems and create clear technical direction.
• Bring strong judgement and can balance innovation, customer outcomes, engineering quality and risk.
• Can influence across multiple teams and domains without relying on formal authority.
• Have the courage to constructively challenge established thinking and ask difficult technical questions.
• Are naturally curious and committed to continuous learning.
• Care deeply about coaching, mentoring and growing engineers.
• Can communicate sophisticated technical ideas clearly to engineers, business stakeholders and senior leaders.
• Bring a customer-first mindset and 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.