Do work that matters
At CommBank, we’re building the technology that powers how the organisation delivers outcomes at scale.
Within Digitisation & Enablement, we’re transforming how platforms, systems, and capabilities are designed, built, and delivered across the enterprise. Our focus is on enabling faster, simpler, and more resilient technology outcomes that directly support business objectives, while contributing to helping the Australian community grow and thrive.
As a Principal Software Engineer, you’ll shape technology strategy and architecture across multiple teams, helping define how modern platforms are built, scaled, and evolved in a complex enterprise environment.
This is an opportunity to influence engineering at scale, drive meaningful transformation, and play a key role in evolving how technology supports business outcomes.
See yourself in our team
You’ll join a high-impact engineering environment focused on building and evolving enterprise platforms and capabilities.
Working across multiple squads, you’ll connect the dots across systems, guide architectural decisions, and ensure we’re building scalable, secure, and resilient solutions that meet long-term needs.
Partnering with senior engineering leaders, architects, product leaders, and engineering managers, you’ll align technical direction to strategy; while staying close enough to delivery to influence outcomes where it matters most.
What you’ll do
Technical Strategy & Architecture
- Co-create and evolve technology strategy and roadmaps aligned to business objectives
- Define architectural direction across platforms, services, and systems
- Ensure solutions meet long-term scalability, reliability, security, and operability goals
- Guide modernisation of enterprise systems and platform evolution
Cross-Team Technical Leadership
- Provide technical leadership across multiple squads and domains
- Identify opportunities for reuse, simplification, and standardisation
- Resolve complex cross-domain engineering challenges
- Influence engineering roadmaps and investment decisions
Engineering Excellence
- Champion engineering standards, patterns, and best practices
- Drive improvements in quality, observability, automation, and reliability
- Lead architecture reviews and governance practices
- Enable teams to move independently while maintaining platform consistency
Leadership & Influence
- Mentor Staff Engineers and senior engineers across the organisation
- Build engineering capability through coaching and knowledge sharing
- Partner with product, architecture, and business stakeholders
- Act as a trusted advisor to senior engineering leadership
We’re looking for people who
- Have significant experience leading large-scale platforms and distributed systems
- Have proven success driving technical strategy across multiple teams
- Bring deep expertise in cloud-native architecture and modern engineering practices
- Can balance immediate delivery with long-term platform evolution
- Influence through technical credibility rather than authority
- Have experience building shared platforms, reusable services, or enterprise
Capabilities
Technical capability
You don’t need expertise in everything we use, but strong fundamentals and depth in modern engineering are essential.
Core Engineering
- Java / Spring Boot
- Distributed systems and API-driven architectures
Workflow & Orchestration
- Temporal (or similar platforms)
- Enterprise workflow and integration patterns
Cloud & Platform
- AWS (including Lambda and cloud-native architectures)
- Scalable, resilient platform design
Emerging & Intelligent Systems
- Python
- Agentic AI patterns and frameworks
- Agent SDKs and orchestration tools (e.g. LangGraph or similar)
Engineering Environment
- GitHub (CI/CD, collaboration, and delivery pipelines)
- Modern DevOps and automation practices
Why this role is different
You won’t just influence a single team, you’ll shape how engineering is done across the organisation.
You’ll play a critical role in defining technology direction, influencing strategy, and enabling step-change improvements in how platforms are built, scaled, and operated using modern tooling, AI, and evolving architectural approaches.
If you're already part of the Commonwealth Bank Group (including Bankwest, x15ventures), you'll need to apply through Sidekick to submit a valid application. We’re keen to support you with the next step in your career.
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Skills Required
- Significant experience leading large-scale platforms and distributed systems
- Proven success driving technical strategy across multiple teams
- Deep expertise in cloud-native architecture and modern engineering practices
- Experience with Java and Spring Boot
- Experience with distributed systems and API-driven architectures
- Experience with workflow/orchestration platforms (e.g., Temporal)
- Experience with AWS including serverless (Lambda) and cloud-native design
- Experience with Python and agentic AI patterns, agent SDKs or orchestration tools (e.g., LangGraph)
- Familiarity with GitHub, CI/CD, DevOps and automation practices
- Proven ability to mentor senior engineers and influence cross-team engineering practices
Commonwealth Bank Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Commonwealth Bank and has not been reviewed or approved by Commonwealth Bank.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — The bank offers additional Life Leave, the option to purchase up to four extra weeks, pet leave, and paid volunteering leave alongside flexible-working options. Public materials indicate these leave features compare well within Australian banking.
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Parental & Family Support — Permanent employees can access up to 18 weeks of paid parental leave, and superannuation is paid for up to 34 weeks of unpaid parental leave. These provisions extend support for new parents beyond standard settings.
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Wellbeing & Lifestyle Benefits — Access includes CBHS Health Fund, Fitness Passport, a 24/7 wellbeing platform with telehealth, an Employee Assistance Program, and employer‑paid income protection for up to two years, alongside staff banking perks and share plans. This combination provides day‑to‑day value across health, protection, and financial perks.
Commonwealth Bank Insights
What We Do
Australia’s leading provider of financial services including retail, premium, business and institutional banking, funds management, superannuation, insurance, investment and sharebroking products and services. We are a business with more than 800,000 shareholders and over 52,000 employees. We offer a full range of financial services to help all Australians build and manage their finances.
