Principal AI Engineer

Why Smart?

Look forward to working with Australia's leading and most trusted provider of Employee Management Services, making the benefits of salary packaging, novated leasing, and fleet management readily available to employers and their employees.

Working at Smart offers more than a job. It is a dynamic workplace that matches the enthusiasm for the work you do and ambition for an exciting fast-paced career. We have all been hired for a purpose and a reason.

Every day you will be part of a team that helps support fellow Australians - many working in essential services, corporates, government, and not-for-profits - to take home more money in their pay packets. 

Do you have what it takes to become a Principal AI Engineer and shape the future of AI at Smart?

We're seeking a Principal AI Engineer to join our AI Squad and play a pivotal role in designing, building, and operating production-grade AI systems that deliver measurable business value. You'll collaborate with product, data, security, and engineering teams to translate business needs into robust AI solutions, set technical strategy, and drive innovation across the organisation.

Key responsibilities:

• Co-define technical strategy, architecture, and standards for AI (LLMs, ML, retrieval, agents, evaluation, and safety).
• Design and build scalable AI services and APIs (inference, RAG, fine-tuning, orchestration, prompt and policy management).
• Own the AI platform and MLOps toolchain (CI/CD for models, feature stores, model registry, experiment tracking, monitoring, and rollback).
• Partner with cross-functional squads to deliver solutions with clear success metrics.
• Establish evaluation frameworks and quality gates for accuracy, bias, safety, latency, and cost.
• Implement secure, privacy-preserving data pipelines and champion prompt/data versioning.
• Ensure AI systems meet security, compliance, and privacy requirements.
• Drive reliability, performance, and cost optimisation for AI workloads.
• Provide technical leadership, mentoring, and conduct design reviews and incident/post-mortems.
• Maintain documentation, runbooks, and architectural decision records.

About you:

• Strong engineering skills in Python, microservices, and cloud-native design (Azure).
• Deep experience with Databricks (Delta, Unity Catalog, MLflow), Azure OpenAI/Azure ML, and retrieval patterns (RAG, tools/agents, function calling).
• Skilled in data engineering: batch/streaming pipelines, data quality, governance, and lineage.
• Security and risk awareness for AI systems (prompt injection defenses, data leakage prevention, content filtering, auditability).
• Ability to translate customer problems and feedback into technical solutions that deliver measurable value.
• Curious, adaptable, and committed to continuous improvement.
• 5–10+ years of engineering experience, including delivery of at least two end-to-end AI products on Azure/Databricks.
• Experience operating AI workloads with App Services, containers, IaC (Bicep), and leading technical direction for squads/platforms.
• Relevant tertiary qualifications and Microsoft Azure/Databricks certifications.

What's in it for you?

Smart team members enjoy a range of benefits designed to support flexibility, wellbeing, reward, and growth:

• Smart Leave, an additional week of leave each year
• Free lunch every week
• Up to 20 weeks Paid Parental Leave with superannuation contributions and a Return-to-Work Bonus
• Make a Difference Days – paid days off to volunteer for the community and environment
• Discounted retail vouchers
• Salary packaging and novated leasing benefits (of course)
• Free flu vaccinations
• Employee Share Plan

Grow with Purpose

At Smart, we're driven by purpose and performance. We support individual and team growth via varied learning opportunities, open communication, and leaders who work to get the basics right – quality and regular one to ones, clear goals and success metrics, and growth conversations.

Show us you have what it takes

If this sounds like the opportunity for you and you have something to offer, we'd love to hear from you. APPLY ONLINE today.
Our Talent Acquisition team will be in touch to discuss next steps. If you require any adjustments to the recruitment process or are seeking part-time work, let us know—we're here to understand.

Our Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion

We're committed to Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity. We welcome all people to join our team — including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, veterans, people with disability, people who identify as LGBTQ+, all gender identities, people of any socioeconomic status, age, race, national origin or ethnicity.

We're proud to hold diversity and inclusion accreditations, including:
- WGEA Employer of Choice for Gender Equality since 2019
- DCA Inclusive Employer 2023–2024
- Member of Reconciliation Australia's RAP network

Please note: all successful candidates will be required to complete background checks including a police clearance prior to confirmation of employment. Candidates must have unlimited Australian work rights to be considered for this role.

Respectfully, no agencies please.