AD, AI Platform Engineering & Financial Operations

Every day, millions of Australians connect, work, stream, and stay in touch on the Optus network. When it works seamlessly, it's easy to take for granted. But behind it is a team making thousands of decisions every day - decisions that keep people, businesses and communities connected. Right now, Optus is passionate about getting the fundamentals right - simplifying how we work, lifting standards, and building a more reliable, resilient experience for our customers. It's not about surface-level change. It's about how we make decisions, how we work together, and how we deliver. The AD, AI Platform Engineering & FinOps leads the engineering, operation and optimisation of the enterprise AI platform, ensuring AI services are secure, scalable, reliable and cost-effective across Network Operations. The role is responsible for AI runtime engineering, platform governance, observability and FinOps, while partnering across technology teams to enable the industrialisation of AI and the progression towards autonomous network operations. This role requires strong technical leadership and the ability to lead through influence as a senior individual contributor, with the opportunity to develop into a people leadership role over time. What You’ll Do Own the AI platform strategy, roadmap and capability maturity plan to support operational AI, automation and autonomous network operations. Lead the engineering and industrialisation of scalable, secure and resilient AI runtime platforms and reusable AI services. Drive AI platform integration, model serving, inference performance and runtime optimisation across operational systems and data platforms. Establish and govern AI FinOps, cost management, security, risk and operational assurance practices to ensure sustainable AI operations. Measure and continuously improve platform performance, availability, adoption, capacity utilisation and operational value. Lead cross-functional teams, stakeholder engagement and strategic technology partnerships while building a high-performing AI platform engineering capability. What You’ll Bring • Demonstrated experience engineering and operating enterprise AI/ML platforms, model serving environments or high-scale runtime services. • Strong knowledge of AI infrastructure, cloud, GPU/CPU compute, model routing, inference, vector databases, observability and modern platform engineering practices. • Strong understanding of AI FinOps, consumption-based cost management, capacity optimisation and commercial management of cloud and AI services. • Proven ability to define platform strategy, engineering standards, governance and roadmaps and translate them into measurable operational outcomes. • Demonstrated ability to lead cross-domain teams and influence senior stakeholders across Engineering, Operations, Architecture, Security, Finance and Technology. • Strong commercial, financial and vendor management capability, including investment prioritisation, contract performance and value realisation. • Relevant tertiary qualifications in Engineering, Computer Science, Data/AI, Technology or equivalent significant industry experience. The good stuff … Competitive remuneration and employee discounts. Make life easier (and more affordable) with $80 monthly credit and 25% off Optus products and unique shopping discounts with our retail partners. Flexible working arrangements with opportunities to work three days in the office, two days remote or home. Competitive leave policies, including additional 'Connected’ days to focus on culture, family, health, community, or whatever’s important to you. We support growing families with inclusive, carer-neutral paid Parental Leave of up to 16 weeks. Direct your own development and build future-ready skills with Optus U’s industry-focused micro-credentials, developed with La Trobe and Macquarie Universities. Build meaningful connections through employee-led networks and diversity initiatives including Culture Connect, Elevate Women, Disability Network and Express Yourself (LGBTQIA+). Put your wellbeing first with free access to counselling and support services, 24/7 — in-person, by phone, SMS, or video. At Optus, we are strengthened by others and that means valuing diversity and saying ‘yes’ to embracing individual differences. We are committed to ensuring that our application process provides an equal employment opportunity to all job seekers, including individuals from diverse gender, cultural and linguistic backgrounds, individuals with a disability, individuals identifying as being part of the LGBTQIA+ community, individuals who may have served in the armed forces or who identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander. We also want to do our best to make our recruitment process inclusive. If you require any adjustments or accessibility support, please email or call 1800 309 170. We’re here to help. When you contact us, please advise your preferred method of contact and we will be in touch within 48 hours. For more information on Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging at Optus, please visit .