Chief Engineer

Overview

Chief Engineer role at Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Bengaluru, one of the bank's most senior technical leaders, setting long-term technical direction and driving engineering excellence across large-scale, complex technology environments.

What you'll do

• 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.

What you'll need

• Experienced Chief Engineer, Principal Engineer, Distinguished Engineer or senior technology leader who has operated 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 judgement.
• 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 judgement, able 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.
• Naturally curious and committed 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, connecting engineering choices to meaningful customer and business outcomes.

Nice to have

• 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.

Details

• Location: Bengaluru.
• Applicants already in the Commonwealth Bank Group (including Bankwest, x15ventures) must apply through Sidekick.
• Advertising end date: 29/11/2026.