Staff AI Lead

Optus is an Australian telecommunications company, delivering more than 11 million services to our customers every day across mobile, broadband and digital solutions. 

At Optus, we're building the next generation of AI-powered customer and employee experiences. As part of one of Australia's largest customer-facing AI portfolios, you'll play a key role in designing and optimising AI solutions that transform how millions of customers engage with Optus

We're looking for a Staff AI Lead to provide technical leadership in the design and delivery of AI agents and intelligent products across Optus. As one of the organisation's senior AI practitioners, you'll shape technical approaches, influence product direction and help establish the standards, frameworks and best practices that enable AI solutions to scale safely and effectively.

This is a senior individual contributor role for someone who combines deep technical expertise with strong product thinking and a passion for solving complex business challenges using Agentic AI, Generative AI and LLM-powered technologies.

What You’ll Do 

• Design, build and continuously improve AI agents and AI-powered products.
• Translate business problems and service opportunities into scalable AI solutions.
• Develop and refine prompts, workflows, tools, orchestration logic and guardrails.
• Drive experimentation, testing and evaluation to improve agent performance and customer outcomes.
• Use data and insights to identify optimisation opportunities and measure impact.
• Partner with Product, Engineering, Operations, Design and Analytics teams to deliver high-quality AI experiences.
• Contribute to standards, frameworks and best practices for developing and scaling AI solutions.

What makes you perfect for the role? 

• Demonstrable experience building and delivering AI agents, GenAI solutions, conversational AI or LLM-powered products.   
• Strong knowledge of agent architectures, orchestration patterns, prompt engineering and AI guardrails.   
• Deep hands-on experience building, evaluating and optimising AI agents and LLM-powered products in production environments.
• Experience using experimentation, analytics and data-driven insights to improve product performance.   
• Strong technical judgement and the ability to influence stakeholders across multiple disciplines.   
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex concepts and drive alignment across teams.  
• A customer-focused mindset, curiosity for emerging technologies and a passion for continuous improvement.

What’s in it for you?

• 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. 

• Vibrant and collaborative office campus that includes cafes, convenience store, chill out zones, GP, post office, gym and on-site childcare centre. 

• 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. 

• Free Optus bus from Macquarie University Metro Station (every 6-8 minutes); morning and afternoon. 

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 to participate fairly and equitably in the recruitment process, please email AccessibleRecruitment@optus.com.au or call 1800 309 170. 

For more information on Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging at Optus, please visit https://www.optus.com.au/about/inclusion-diversity