AI & Data Engineering Lead

AI & Data Engineering Lead 

• Lead the delivery of AI-native, data-driven and cloud-powered solutions from design through to production 

• Champion AI-first engineering practices that help your team build faster, safer and at greater scale 

• Help clients move from AI ambition to scaled, production-ready adoption 

We are seeking an Engineering Lead to join our AI & Data practice. Based in Sydney or Melbourne, this role sits on our Engineering pathway, a career pathway designed for engineers who want to lead through technical excellence. You'll provide technical leadership across client engagements, guide engineering decisions, and grow high-performing teams that deliver secure, scalable and production-ready AI, data and cloud solutions. 

We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds and experiences and recognise that careers don't always follow a straight path. If you meet most of the points below, we'd like to hear from you. 

About the team

Our AI & Data team comprises more than 500 specialist practitioners across Australia, each of whom are constantly curious and excited about combining their business acumen and technological expertise to create AI and data-centric solutions that help solve complex problems and transform or reinvent our clients’ business.

Our AI & Data team work with public and private sector clients, helping them design and implement world-leading solutions and capabilities. From solving air and ground transport network issues through our industry-first Optimal Reality digital twin solution, to bringing automation capabilities to vaccine rollout programs and helping our clients move to a sustainable world, we are the partner of choice for our clients and our alliance vendors.

Our technology relationships with market-leading vendors such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Databricks, Snowflake and Informatica enable our practitioners to be at the forefront of new and emerging capabilities and to deliver our suite of services at scale. We are consistently recognised as leaders in Cloud, Data, Analytics and AI, including in the latest analyst reports.

What will your typical day look like? 

You'll lead the engineering effort on client engagements – designing, building and shipping AI, data and cloud solutions, while lifting the standard of everyone around you. 

• Technical Direction & Architecture – Lead the technical design and implementation of your engagement, ensuring engineering decisions align with architecture, quality, security and delivery objectives. 

• Staying Hands-On –Maintain technical depth through critical designs, engineering decisions and reviews, staying close to the delivery challenges that matter most. 

• Leading Delivery – Lead engineering delivery across the engagement, removing technical blockers, maintaining delivery momentum and ensuring teams meet quality and operational standards. 

• Client & Stakeholder Leadership – Work directly with client stakeholders on technical direction, trade-offs and delivery risk. 

• Leading Engineers – Coach and develop engineers through mentoring, technical leadership and regular feedback, helping individuals grow their capability and increase their impact. 

• Engineering Quality & Assurance – Lead adoption of engineering practices including testing, CI/CD, code review, observability, governance and responsible AI, ensuring solutions are production-ready, supportable and aligned to engineering standards. 

• AI-Enabled Delivery – Drive adoption of AI-first engineering practices, reusable accelerators and modern developer tooling to improve productivity, quality and delivery outcomes. 

• Growing the Practice – Contribute to proposals, solution shaping and technical pursuits, while building reusable assets, accelerators and engineering patterns for the practice. 

Enough about us, let's talk about you. 

You may have all or some of the following skills and experiences: 

• 6+ years' experience in software, data or AI engineering, including leading others. 

• Strong development skills in Python, Scala, Java or similar, plus advanced SQL, and a passion for building high-quality, maintainable solutions. 

• Experience designing and delivering production-grade software, data or AI solutions on modern cloud platforms such as Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, Databricks or Snowflake. 

• Track record of owning engineering quality through design leadership, code review, mentoring and establishment of engineering best practices. 

• Ability to communicate technical concepts, trade-offs and delivery risks to both technical and business stakeholders, building confidence in engineering decisions. 

• Ability to navigate ambiguity, break down complex problems and guide teams toward practical engineering outcomes. 

Nice to have: 

• Experience applying AI-assisted engineering practices, agentic workflows or AI tools as part of software, data or cloud delivery. 

• An interest in making the value of data and AI visible to clients, through visualisation, working demos or products people actually use. 

Applicants must hold working rights in Australia to apply. 

Why Deloitte?

At Deloitte, we focus our energy on interesting and impactful work. We're always learning, innovating and setting the standard; making a positive difference to our clients and our society. We put coaching at the heart of what we do, helping our people grow their careers in any direction - whether it be up, moving into something new, or even moving across the world.

We embrace diversity, equity and inclusion. We have a diverse collection of people from different backgrounds, with different experiences, gender identities, abilities and thinking styles. What binds us together is a shared commitment to value everyone's perspective and to cultivate inclusion; so that our work environment is a safe space we can all belong.

We value in-person connection with our clients and our colleagues. We offer several ways for you to work flexibly so that you can serve your clients, stay connected with your team, and manage your personal priorities.

We help you live and work well. To support your personal and professional life, we offer a range of perks and benefits, including retail discounts, wellbeing leave, paid volunteering days, twelve flexible working options, market-leading parental leave and return to work support package.

Next Steps

Sound like the sort of role for you? Apply now, we'd love to hear from you!