Technical Lead (AI Engineering)

Technical Lead (AI Engineering) | Melbourne | Build the Future of Enterprise AIOwn the AI strategy for a major Australian enterpriseLead a team while remaining deeply hands-onBuild production AI systems that solve real customer problems at scaleMost AI jobs today fall into one of two categories. They're either research-heavy roles where your work never reaches production. Or they're feature teams adding an LLM to an existing product and calling it AI. This isn't either of those. This is an opportunity to define how AI is engineered across one of Australia's largest and most recognisable organisations. You'll take ownership of AI architecture, guide technical direction, and lead a team delivering intelligent systems that operate at genuine enterprise scale. What's in it for you?Own the technical direction for AI Engineering across a high-profile product platform.Lead a squad of engineers while staying hands-on with architecture and development.Build production AI systems that customers interact with every day.Work on Agentic AI, RAG, vector search, intelligent automation, and LLM-powered workflows.Influence engineering standards, AI architecture, and platform strategy from day one.Work alongside experienced engineering and product leaders who value technical excellence.The Role This is an AI Engineering role, not a Data Science position. You'll be responsible for taking AI capabilities from concept through to production, ensuring they're scalable, observable, secure, and commercially valuable. You'll lead a team of engineers while remaining close to the technology, making key architectural decisions and helping establish the engineering practices that will underpin future AI initiatives. You'll work across areas such as:Large Language Models (LLMs)Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)Agentic AIVector databasesPrompt and context engineeringAI orchestrationAI observability and evaluationProduction AI platformsYou'll collaborate closely with Product, Engineering and business stakeholders to identify opportunities where AI can deliver meaningful customer and commercial outcomes. What You'll Bring You're probably a Software Engineer first, who has evolved into AI Engineering. You'll bring experience across:Strong C#/.NET engineering backgroundPython for AI and backend servicesAWS cloud technologies (experience with Bedrock and SageMaker highly regarded)Distributed systems and event-driven architectureMicroservices and API-first designBuilding and operating production AI or ML systemsRAG, vector databases, AI agents, MCP or similar modern AI patternsCI/CD, observability, monitoring and engineering best practicesLeadership experience is equally important. You'll have mentored engineers, influenced architecture, and helped raise the technical capability of the teams around you. Unfortunately, candidates requiring visa sponsorship or holding temporary work visas cannot be considered. If you're looking for one of Australia's most impactful AI Engineering opportunities, where you'll shape strategy, remain hands-on, and build AI systems that operate at genuine enterprise scale, we'd love to hear from you. Apply now or reach out to Karl directly at karl@theonset.com.au for a confidential conversation.