Staff Software Engineer

Organization 

At CommBank, we never lose sight of the role we play in other people’s financial wellbeing. Our focus is to help people and businesses move forward, to progress, make the right financial decisions, and achieve their dreams, targets and aspirations. Regardless of where you work within our organisation, your initiative, talent, ideas and energy all contribute to the impact that we can make with our work. Together, we can achieve great things. 

Our purpose: Building a brighter future for all. 

Job Title: Gen AI Staff Software Engineer

Location: Bangalore

Business & Team 

As we continue our pursuit of NPS +30, we need to transform the way we engage with our customers and colleagues. This requires a shift from a two-track digital versus assisted approach to a deeply personal and empathic end-to-end digital experience enriched and augmented by our colleagues. This will require self-healing adaptive work orchestration systems that blend the capabilities of colleagues, AI and APIs. These systems must handle the high frequency of exceptional circumstances arising during customer journeys while remaining compliant with policies and regulations, without the significant change and maintenance burden of today. The Gen AI Domain has been established to build the tools and capabilities needed across the Group, tapping into the promise of Generative AI through the “Transformer Banking” initiative. 

This domain within CDAO is focused on solution practices, tools and platforms required to successfully leverage Large Language Models, rather than the tools and capabilities required to create those models. This includes technology platforms and tools such as the Gen AI Hub, RAG tooling, knowledge management services, and LLM access and control planes; business platforms and tools such as Customer Conversation Manager and Customer Activity Manager; and practice capability co-creating patterns and practices for Gen AI usage with crews across CBA. 

The Gen AI Domain will provide services, tools and practices that enable crews across CBA to safely and effectively leverage Generative AI as components of more traditional solutions. We are looking for people who thrive in ambiguity, build strong team cultures, remain obsessed with customer needs, thoughtfully manage a wide variety of risks, and are passionate about transforming a large enterprise in a heavily regulated environment using Gen AI. 

Impact & Contribution 

As a Staff Software Engineer for Gen AI, you will use deep technical expertise in engineering principles and Gen AI platforms to achieve business outcomes. You will provide core technology and domain knowledge to inform the crew’s technical strategy and lead the design, enhancement and maintenance of solutions to complex Gen AI challenges. We are leading the world in AI ambition within Australia’s largest bank and fintech. Together, we will engineer the future of banking with innovative Gen AI solutions. 

Reporting Line 

Direct line reporting to the Principal Engineer, Gen AI, India. 

Roles & Responsibilities 

• Develop and maintain robust, scalable systems to support the deployment and operation of generative AI models, ensuring efficient use of computational resources. 

• Build Gen AI capability among engineers across knowledge engineering, prompt engineering and platform engineering. 

• Knowledge Engineering: Identify and gather relevant domain-specific knowledge from various sources and structure it so that LLMs can understand and utilise it. 

• Prompt Engineering: Build effective instructions for Gen AI models to generate more relevant, accurate and creative outputs. 

• Platform Engineering: Collaborate with other teams to integrate AI solutions into existing workflows and systems. Configure and manage the underlying infrastructure to ensure scalability, reliability and high availability. 

• Evaluate the performance of Gen AI models, identify improvement areas and iteratively refine models to enhance accuracy, efficiency and fairness. 

• Provide strategic guidance and oversee medium-complexity system engineering initiatives and solutions. 

• Oversee the design, development and maintenance of the Gen AI Hub, including infrastructure, tools and APIs. 

• Work with Data Scientists and other teams to ensure the platform integrates seamlessly with existing workflows and meets user needs. 

• Use technical expertise to solve platform issues, improve ways of working, and enhance and automate the existing platform using the latest automation tools. 

• Stay current with advances in generative AI, including the latest research, model releases and performance developments. 

• Develop and recommend infrastructure design best practices that support model fine-tuning, improve performance and efficiency, and enable effective troubleshooting during development and deployment. 

• Embed security best practices throughout the development lifecycle to protect the platform from vulnerabilities and data breaches. 

• Implement robust monitoring, logging and LLMOps practices to proactively identify and resolve potential issues. 

• Ensure Responsible AI metrics are governed through appropriate system infrastructure, guardrails and monitoring. 

Essential Skills & Experience 

• Technology delivery expertise, combining deep technical capability with the ability to deliver outcomes. 

• High level of communication and negotiation skills, including the demonstrated ability to solicit opinions and accept feedback. 

• Experience operating effectively as part of cross-functional teams. 

• Proficiency in IT SDLC processes and written documentation and specification skills. 

• Experience in Prompt Engineering, Platform Engineering and/or Knowledge Engineering disciplines. 

• Minimum of 10 years of experience in a relevant field. 

• Proven track record of building and leading a team of engineering professionals. 

• Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to identify creative solutions to complex problems. 

• Strong cross-cultural communication skills and the ability to effectively manage collaboration across time zones. 

Technical Skills 

• Cloud solution architecture, development, security and Infrastructure as Code across AWS and Azure. 

• Python, TypeScript and/or C#. 

• Prompt Engineering. 

• Gen AI frameworks and tools such as LangChain and Semantic Kernel. 

• Vector, graph and SQL databases. 

• Non-deterministic automated testing. 

• Machine Learning, including LLM fine-tuning. 

• System Reliability Engineering. 

• Secure Coding. 

• Customer engagement systems. 

• Workflow platforms. 

Education Qualification 

Bachelor’s degree in engineering or master’s degree in computer science.