Senior Lead, AI Research

About Us At ANZ, we're shaping a world where people and communities thrive, driven by a common goal: to improve the financial wellbeing and sustainability of our millions of customers. About the Role As a Senior Lead - AI Research, you will play a critical role in helping ANZ safely and responsibly adopt emerging artificial intelligence technologies. Working within our Data & AI function, you will combine deep research expertise with practical engineering and governance outcomes, translating advanced AI methods into scalable, measurable and enterprise-ready solutions. This is an exciting opportunity for an experienced AI researcher to influence how generative AI and agentic technologies are governed and deployed across one of Australia's largest financial institutions. You will focus on developing practical governance controls, evaluation frameworks, guardrails and monitoring approaches that enable innovation while maintaining ANZ's high standards for risk management, security and responsible AI. Banking is changing and we’re changing with it, giving our people great opportunities to try new things, learn and grow. Whatever your role at ANZ, you’ll be building your future, while helping to build ours. Role Type: Permanent Role Location: Melbourne or Brisbane Work Hours: Full-Time What will your day look like? As a Senior Lead - AI Research, you will: Evaluate emerging AI, generative AI and agentic engineering approaches and assess their suitability within a highly regulated banking environment. Design and develop practical AI governance controls including evaluation frameworks, guardrails, monitoring patterns and evidence-capture approaches. Research and prototype solutions for challenges such as hallucination measurement, prompt injection risks, agent observability, retrieval quality and human-in-the-loop assurance. Translate responsible AI, security, privacy and regulatory requirements into scalable technical standards and engineering guidance. Develop research-backed prototypes, reference architectures and reusable implementation patterns that support safe AI adoption across ANZ. Partner with Architecture, Engineering, Security, Risk, Legal, Compliance and Product teams to validate and operationalise research outcomes. Apply rigorous scientific and evidence-based methods, including experimentation, benchmarking and hypothesis testing, to inform decision making. Monitor developments across AI research, industry practices and regulatory environments to help shape ANZ's future AI governance capabilities. What will you bring? To grow and be successful in this role, you will ideally bring: PhD-level research expertise, or equivalent applied research experience, in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Computer Science, Data Science, Engineering, Applied Mathematics or a related discipline. Strong understanding of generative AI and agentic systems, including prompt engineering, retrieval-augmented generation, orchestration, evaluation methodologies, guardrails and monitoring. Demonstrated experience translating complex AI concepts into practical enterprise controls, standards, implementation guidance or production-ready solutions. Knowledge of AI governance, model risk management, responsible AI, privacy, security and regulatory expectations. Experience designing AI evaluation frameworks, benchmarks, monitoring approaches and evidence-based decision processes. Excellent stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to communicate technical concepts and risk trade-offs to both technical and non-technical audiences. Desirable Experience Experience applying AI research within banking, financial services or other highly regulated industries. Exposure to LLMs, agentic workflows, adversarial testing, AI safety and control effectiveness testing. Familiarity with MLOps, LLMOps, model lifecycle management, evaluation pipelines and production monitoring frameworks. Experience developing enterprise standards, reference architectures, control libraries or reusable engineering assets. Publications or recognised contributions to AI, machine learning, security, systems engineering or responsible AI research disciplines. So why join us? From the moment you join ANZ, you'll be doing meaningful work that will shape a world where people and communities thrive. But it's not just our customers who'll feel your impact. You'll feel it too. Because at ANZ, you'll have the resources, opportunities, and support you need to take the next big step in your career. We're a diverse bunch at ANZ in different roles, different locations, doing different things. That's why we have a range of flexible working arrangements, so our people can 'make work, work for them'. We also provide a range of benefits including access to health and wellbeing services and discounts on selected products and services from ANZ and more. At ANZ, you'll be part of an organisation where the different backgrounds, perspectives and life experiences of our people are celebrated. That's because we're committed to building a workplace that reflects the diversity of the communities we serve. We welcome applications from everyone and encourage you to talk to us about any adjustments you may require to our recruitment process or the role itself. If you're a candidate with a disability or access requirement, and have an enquiry about the support provided, please let us know on your application or visit ANZ Accessibility and Inclusion Programs for alternate contact methods. To find out more about working at ANZ, visit . You can apply for this role by visiting ANZ Careers and searching for reference number 126445 . Job Posting End Date 06/11/2026, 11.59pm, (Melbourne Australia)