{"id":3267100,"url":"https://alion.io/job/westpac-ai-science-lead-knowledge-agents","title":"AI Science Lead - Knowledge Agents","company":{"id":1766325,"name":"Westpac","domain":"westpac.com.au","url":"https://alion.io/company/westpac-com-au","size_band":"501-1000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Oracle","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":100,"open_postings":8,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":14,"computed_at":"2026-10-28T05:59:10Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"lead","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"hybrid","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":110000,"max_usd":273000,"period":"year","method":"global_role_cell_scaled_by_country","sample_n":1286},"experience_years_min":8,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"LLMOps","optional":false},{"name":"RAG","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-26T07:50:28Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-26","last_verified_at":"2026-10-28T11:24:08Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":2,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":2},"description":"Sydney, Melbourne, or Brisbane Location\nHybrid Working\nThe Opportunity\nWestpac is building a reusable Knowledge Agents capability to help frontline employees find accurate, secure and trusted answers when they need them. We are looking for a Lead AI Scientist who can stay close to technical details, set the quality bar and build the team that will deliver this capability at scale.\nThis is a hands-on leadership role, reporting to the Head of AI. You will own the Consumer knowledge agent technical roadmap, lead complex retrieval, evaluation and agent-design decisions, and work directly with the data, evaluation and delivery questions that determine whether a knowledge agent can be trusted in a regulated banking environment. At the same time, you will recruit, coach and lead a growing team of AI professionals.\nImportantly, you will turn fragmented knowledge into one coherent, reusable and well-governed capability that helps frontline teams across contact centres (CCaaS), AI servicing, mortgage operations and branches to serve customers well.\nResponsibilities\nOwn the Consumer Knowledge Agents technical roadmap with business, Product, Digital and Technology partners, so frontline initiatives build one coherent, reusable capability aligned to divisional and enterprise AI and knowledge management strategies.\nPartner with business and Product owners to frame and prioritise use cases with clear users, benefits, content sources, ownership, risk classification and measurable outcomes.\nLead hands-on technical direction across knowledge ingestion, retrieval, grounding, orchestration, access controls and workflow integration through agreed architecture and implementation patterns.\nOwn end-to-end solution quality, from response evaluation and validation through controlled release and production monitoring, so answers are accurate, grounded, traceable and permission-aware, with effective abstention, escalation and human oversight.\nEnsure every solution meets Group AI risk policies, embedding privacy, security, model risk, Responsible AI, explainability, fairness, human oversight and operational resilience.\nAgree shared components, interfaces, acceptance criteria, operational ownership and integration with frontline workflows across capability and use-case teams.\nMonitor answer quality, adoption, performance and realised value, intervening or escalating where outcomes, controls or timelines are at risk.\nBuild reusable components, patterns and quality standards that can be adopted across Consumer and the wider AI Science practice.\nRecruit, lead and develop a high-performing team, creating clarity, psychological safety, rigorous technical review and shared learning.\nEssential Skills & Experience\n8+ years in data science and applied AI, including senior leadership, with recent hands-on practice in complex, highly regulated financial services environments.\nDemonstrated delivery of enterprise knowledge agents, retrieval-augmented generation or related LLM-enabled solutions beyond proof of concept into controlled production use.\nDeep practical expertise across retrieval, grounding, knowledge ingestion, content provenance, agent orchestration, evaluation, monitoring and LLMOps.\nSound understanding of permission-aware access, privacy, security, model risk, Responsible AI and the controls required for high-trust employee-facing solutions.\nThe ability to evaluate answer quality using groundedness, citation accuracy, retrieval quality, latency, cost, source freshness and regression coverage.\nProven people leadership, including building teams, hiring practitioners, coaching technical talent, setting direction and managing performance and delivery.\nCredibility with senior business and technology stakeholders, with the judgement to explain uncertainty, offer constructive technical review and make practical risk-based decisions.\nExperience with frontline servicing, contact centres, branch operations, mortgage operations or enterprise knowledge management.\nDoes this sound like you?\nTo get started, simply click on the APPLY or APPLY NOW button. Please note that application closing dates are subject to change so don’t delay putting your best foot forward!\nWe’re all about creating a supportive and inclusive community. We welcome everyone - no matter your age, gender, background, or abilities. We also provide added support to welcome our veterans, Indigenous Australians, and neurodiverse community.\nIf you need any adjustments during the recruitment process, you can find out more information and additional contact details by visiting the \"People with Disability and/or needing Accessibility Requirements\" page on our website.","description_format":"text","description_chars":4673,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":8,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Hybrid work"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"Australia","iso":"AU","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Commercial & Retail Banks","Business & SME Lending"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-26T09:47:59Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":90,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.903,"p_room":1,"age_days":1,"expected_fill_days":14,"reasons":["conf:0","velocity","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-10-28T05:59:10Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/westpac-ai-science-lead-knowledge-agents","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/westpac-ai-science-lead-knowledge-agents.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-28T14:24:40Z","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":19644,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-29T00:00:00Z"}},"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":1766325},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=1766325"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fwestpac-ai-science-lead-knowledge-agents"},{"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%2Fwestpac-ai-science-lead-knowledge-agents"},{"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%2Fwestpac-ai-science-lead-knowledge-agents"},{"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/westpac-ai-science-lead-knowledge-agents\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fwestpac-ai-science-lead-knowledge-agents"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3267100}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"westpac.com.au","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3267100},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. Docs: https://alion.io/developers"}}