Permanent role based in Melbourne or Sydney We're REA With bold and ambitious goals, REA Group is changing the way the world experiences property. No matter where you're at on your property journey, we're here to help with every step - whether that's finding or financing your next home. Our people are the key to our success. At the heart of everything we do, is a thriving culture centred around high performance and care. We are purpose driven and collaborative, which drives innovation and our ability to make a real impact. As such, we’re proud to have been named one of Australia’s Best Workplaces four times since 2021 — including third place in 2025 — plus Best Workplace for Women in 2023 and Best Workplace in Technology in 2024 and 2025. These listings are testament to every person who helps make REA a great place to work. Where the team fits in This role will support our Consumer business, working across the portfolio’s cross-functional delivery teams to deliver world-class experiences, market leadership, lead generation, and technical innovation. The Consumer business focuses on digital property experiences for people looking to buy, sell, rent, or research homes, and broader property market information. It’s essentially the “consumer-facing” side of REA’s operations, sitting alongside its B2B (agents, developers) and media/data businesses. Day to day of the job In this role, you will provide collaborative architectural guidance and direction across the various delivery squads as they surface up insight and value to the glass. Based upon your domain experience you will have a PoV on the future of AI as it applies to consumer marketing, search and personalisation. Working in collaboration with designers, large engineering teams, and non-technical stakeholders, you will ensure solutions are fit-for-purpose, aligned with enterprise NFRs, and deliver business value through the sustainable use of AI/ML technologies. You will champion our technical practices, drive innovation, uplift our architecture and data science capabilities across REA to ensure high-quality outcomes which deliver ROI while minimizing risk across the full SLDC for our business. The focus of this role is on architecture and leadership, while not directly hands-on, it is expected that you will have technical skills across data science and MLOps toolchains to pair across investigation, design, and PoC work as required. While no two days are likely to be the same in this role, typical responsibilities will include: Facilitating the development and delivery of complex data and AI/ML solutions, ensuring consistency with REA standards, policies, and target state architectures. Influencing the business decision-making processes by acting as a trusted advisor, including capturing and disseminating technical and business information across all stakeholders. Collaborating with REA architects as well as technical and product leaders to understand and inform best practices for evolving REA’s AI/ML technical architecture. Managing cross-domain design decisioning, describing trade-offs and impacts which reflect a well-architected framework. Ensuring decision-making is a collaborative and transparent process with stakeholders of all levels involved. Uplifting governance frameworks and guardrails for responsible, ethical and sustainable development and use of machine learning, particularly for Generative AI-enabled technologies. Acting as an AI/ML thought-leader, monitoring the external environment, assessing emerging technologies and innovations. Sharing this knowledge and insight across REA to influence and inform strategies and implementations. Supporting and mentoring individual contributors in architecture and data science practices. Areas of Focus The role will provide technical thought leadership in several focus areas, including: Cloud-enabled Data Science activities across the full product lifecycle. End-to-end Enterprise scaled solutions enabled by AI/ML, reflecting a sustainable, secure, and cost optimised approach. Thought leadership on future of AI/ML on industry-validated patterns, trends, and innovation. Who we’re looking for Someone with a few runs on the board - you will likely have 10 years of experience working in enterprise-level data science function and 5 years leading a data science or engineering team. Tertiary qualification in Computer Science or similar highly desirable. A champion of consistent architecture and design, you will effectively balance the use of shared platforms with team autonomy and be committed to systematically retiring legacy systems. Great influencing skills. You’re someone who can successfully engage with the business to champion the ROI of great engineering solutions and influence decision making. Expert communication, collaboration and conflict resolution skills, with the ability to communicate with stakeholders of all levels and backgrounds, including non-technical stakeholders. Expert skills in enterprise-level solution architecture for cloud-native AI/ML designs. (GCP and/or AWS preferred) - Machine Learning certification desirable but not essential. Proven track record of delivering scalable, resource intensive, and integrated consumer facing data and AI solutions. Bonus points for GenAI content filtering and prompt hardening. Deep experience in scaled personalisation, online marketing technology (Martech) and the application of innovative technologies in this space. Security knowledge with an Enterprise mindset. Someone who looks at tricky situations through a solutions-focused lens. The REA experience The physical, mental, emotional and financial health of our people is something we’ll never stop caring about. This is a place to learn and grow. Some of our Perks & Benefits include: A hybrid and flexible approach to working Flexible leave options including, birthday leave and purchase additional leave Flexible parental leave offering for primary and secondary carers Our Because We Care program offers employees volunteering leave, community grants, matched payroll giving and our Community Café donates 100% of revenue to charity Hackdays so you can bring your big ideas to life Our commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion We are committed to providing a working environment that embraces and values diversity, equity and inclusion. We believe teams with diverse ideas and experiences are more creative, more effective and fuel disruptive thinking. If you've got the skills, dedication and enthusiasm to learn but don't necessarily meet every single point on the job description, please still get in touch.
