{"id":2964435,"url":"https://alion.io/job/tal-principal-engineer-2","title":"Principal Engineer","company":{"id":7066,"name":"TAL","domain":"tal.com.au","url":"https://alion.io/company/tal","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"SmartRecruiters","truth_index":null},"role":"Industrial Engineering","role_family":"Industrial Engineering","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Sydney, Australia"],"countries":["AU"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":80000,"max_usd":205000,"period":"year","method":"global_role_cell_scaled_by_country","sample_n":2403},"experience_years_min":10,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Agentic Workflows","optional":false},{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"Azure","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"LLMOps","optional":false},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-20T05:09:54Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-20","last_verified_at":"2026-10-22T20:20:05Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":2,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":2},"description":"Help protect over 5 million Australians, making a real difference in their lives during their most challenging times. \nWork alongside diverse, passionate colleagues and leaders who inspire, support, and value your contributions. \nAccess the tools and resources to acquire new skills, grow your capabilities, and take on new roles within a progressive, digitally enabled company.\nWhatever your ambitions, take your career further than you ever imagined. If you’ve never considered insurance before, think again! With diverse, meaningful projects and a global network of opportunities, we offer so much more.\nWe invest in our people and partnerships. Our learning experiences are vast, including exclusive industry accreditation, and we're building capability for the future, both for TAL and the broader industry. When challenges arise (and they will), our supportive team will be there to help you grow.\n As the Principal Engineer, AI & Emerging Technology, you will serve as TAL's most senior technical specialist in AI engineering, shaping the direction, architecture, and governance of AI capabilities across the enterprise. You will lead the design and implementation of innovative solutions spanning generative AI, agentic systems, and production machine learning, while partnering closely with delivery teams to solve complex technical challenges and accelerate adoption of emerging technologies.\nThrough the development of reference architectures, reusable engineering patterns, and technical standards, you will drive best practice, strengthen engineering capability, and ensure solutions are secure, reliable, and fit for purpose within a regulated life insurance environment. Combining deep technical expertise with enterprise-wide influence, you will play a pivotal role in transforming complex AI innovations into scalable, practical solutions that deliver meaningful business value.\nIn this role you will:\nSet the technical direction and reference architectures for AI solutions across the portfolio, covering generative AI, agentic systems, ML and the platforms that support them.\nOwn critical design decisions in partnership with Architecture, ensuring solutions align with TAL's technology strategy, platform foundations and integration patterns.\nProvide technical assurance on high-risk designs, acting as the escalation point for complex engineering trade-offs.\nWork directly with delivery pods on complex engineering problems e.g. complex integrations, agentic workflows, performance, reliability and evaluation.\nDefine and evolve engineering standards, patterns and best practices for AI development, including agentic software development, CI/CD, testing and observability.\nChampion reuse of shared AI platforms, gateways and governance tooling, and contribute to their design and evolution.\nIdentify and address technical risks including model risk, data privacy, security and drift, partnering with Cyber and Risk on controls.\nStay at the forefront of advancements in AI, machine learning and agentic engineering, and evaluate new technologies and approaches that can advance TAL's AI capabilities.\n Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, AI, or related field. Advanced degrees preferred.\n10+ years in software, AI/ML or data engineering roles, with a sustained record of designing and shipping complex AI solutions to production at scale.\nProven experience as a principal-level or senior technical leader, setting architecture and standards across multiple teams and leading through influence.\nDeep expertise in generative AI, LLM-based and agentic systems, and MLOps/LLMOps practices including evaluation, monitoring and safe deployment.\nExtensive hands-on experience with major cloud platforms (Azure preferred), including AI/MLservices, APIs, containers and modern integration patterns.\n\nExpert proficiency in Python and modern engineering practices; fluency with AI-assisted and agenticsoftware development workflows.\n\nDeep understanding of CI/CD, automated testing, observability and software engineering principles, and experience embedding these across teams.\n TAL is one of Australia’s leading life insurers, committed to inclusion, and supporting the career growth of our diverse workforce. We’re proud to be:\nAn Inclusive Employer - Recognised as Employer of Choice for Gender Equality by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency from 2014 to 2025 and 2023 to 2026 Bronze Tier Status within the Australian Workplace Equality Index \nDiversity Champions - Member of Diversity Council Australia, Australian Disability Network, Pride in Diversity and Champions of Change \nReconciliation Advocates - Read our Innovate Reconciliation Action Plan. \nWe welcome applications from people with diverse experiences, perspectives and backgrounds including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, caregivers, individuals with disability/ies, people from culturally diverse backgrounds and the LGBTQ+ community. \nNeed adjustments during the recruitment process? Let our team know by getting in touch with us here. -we’re here to support you. \nYou’re always accountable for your actions. You never give up. You strive to find the best outcomes for customers and partners. And you value working together to find the best solutions for problems.\nAs part of the recruitment process, there are several checks which may be conducted to demonstrate your eligibility for a role at TAL including Criminal History, Bankruptcy, Entitlement to Work, Regulatory and Reference Checks.\n#LI-Hybrid\nEveryone at TAL has a responsibility to do the right thing and is accountable for the way they conduct themselves. Our expectations are that you follow the principles set out in our Code of Conduct when you come to work every day. Risk management is everyone’s responsibility.\nIf you are already a TAL employee please apply via the SmartRecruiters button in Workday and navigate to the Employee Portal. This is important to ensure that your application is recorded accurately.","description_format":"text","description_chars":6001,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":10,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[{"language":"English","level":"All levels","optional":false}]},"benefits":["Life insurance"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Life Insurance & Annuities"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-20T23:43:02Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":90,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.903,"p_room":1,"age_days":2,"expected_fill_days":13,"reasons":["conf:0","velocity","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-10-22T06:10:10Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/tal-principal-engineer-2","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/tal-principal-engineer-2.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-22T22:50:30Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":8240,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-23T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":7066},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=7066"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Ftal-principal-engineer-2"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Ftal-principal-engineer-2"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Ftal-principal-engineer-2"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/tal-principal-engineer-2\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Ftal-principal-engineer-2"}]}