Engineering Lead, X15ventures

Lead Engineer

Let's introduce ourselves. We're a venture-scaler powered by CommBank. That means we build, buy, and invest in startups that could benefit the bank's 15 million customers and beyond. Because of what we do, we're really neither corporate, nor startup – instead we're happily navigating the space between both worlds. We're close enough to benefit from the bank's strategy, scale, and stability, but separate enough that we have the autonomy to try new things.

Where would you fit? We're looking for a Lead Engineer to help reimagine how Australians interact with their retirement savings – an initiative exploring new ways to make retirement banking simpler, faster, and more meaningful for everyday Australians. As Lead Engineer, you'll be at the heart of a team bringing innovation to one of Australia's most important financial journeys – retirement. Partnering with product, designers, and stakeholders across CommBank, x15, and the broader superannuation ecosystem, you'll define the platform architecture, core services, and integration approach that bring the concept to life. You'll lead through building – hands-on in code, architecture, and delivery. From design to deployment, you'll define engineering standards, select frameworks, and ensure the platform is secure, performant, and built for scale. You'll work directly with superfund partners and end users to understand how the system performs in real-world conditions, shaping both the technical design and user experience. This role is ideal for an engineer who loves turning complex problems into clean, reliable systems – someone who moves confidently between architecture and implementation, takes ownership of the product experience end-to-end, and builds with a long-term vision for scalability and impact.

Key responsibilities:

• Design and build core platform services for the PoC – APIs, integrations, and data models – engineered for security, reliability, and future scale.
• Lead the technical direction across backend and integration layers, choosing frameworks and patterns that are simple to maintain, observable, and ready to evolve.
• Turn product requirements into working software – writing clean, testable code with clear interfaces and well-documented contracts.
• Establish modern delivery practices – CI/CD, automated testing, Infrastructure-as-Code, and cloud environments (AWS preferred) that enable frequent, safe releases.
• Embed observability from day one – metrics, logs, traces, and alerting that give confidence in how the system behaves for real users.
• Proactively manage technical risk – surface dependencies early, design for security and privacy, and keep the codebase healthy as the product scales.
• Uphold engineering standards through collaboration – reviewing code, sharing architectural context, and mentoring others so the team moves fast without compromising quality.
• Engage directly with superfund partners and members to understand real-world performance, reliability, and usability – building solutions that work beyond the codebase.

Your skills and experience:

• Deep experience designing and delivering distributed systems with modern languages and frameworks.
• Built secure, compliant, API-led platforms that integrate with external systems and services.
• Hands-on front-end capability (e.g. React) to develop lightweight UIs or demos that showcase early concepts.
• Strong data fundamentals – relational modelling (e.g. Postgres), migrations, and query performance.
• A disciplined approach to automated testing (unit, contract, integration) and a track record of shipping with confidence.
• Operational excellence – observability, incident response, performance tuning, and capacity awareness.
• Security by design – threat modelling, secrets management, least privilege, and baseline hardening within regulated environments.
• Proven delivery of PoCs or MVPs in startup or innovation settings – balancing speed with technical integrity.
• Clear, direct communication and the ability to collaborate across engineering, product, risk, and partner teams.
• Cloud infrastructure expertise (AWS preferred) and Infrastructure-as-Code (e.g. Terraform); containerisation and orchestration experience is a plus.
• Familiarity with real-time payments, open banking, or digital identity integrations (e.g. NPP concepts, ConnectID or similar).
• Experience with event-driven architectures – streams, queues, and idempotent integration design for reliability at scale.
• Ability to evolve prototypes into production architectures – setting guardrails, decomposing services, and building operating models (runbooks, SLOs, on-call).

Why Join Us?

• Enjoy a flexible and dynamic startup environment building our next fintech from the ground up.
• We nurture a safe space for our people to show up as they are!
• Competitive salary and bonus structure.
• Opportunities for professional growth and development.
• Access to the best in class benefits that CommBank offers.
• Research shows that people from underrepresented backgrounds sometimes hesitate to apply for roles if they don't meet every requirement. If this is you, don't worry - we still encourage you to apply. We are committed to creating a workplace that supports long-lasting and meaningful careers for everyone, and your unique skills and perspective might be just what we're looking for!