AI Risk Business Partner — Line 1 Risk
Role purpose
Partner with Product, Delivery and Risk leaders to enable Bankwest to innovate safely at pace using AI.
This role is the Line 1 AI risk champion combining strong commercial judgement, technical literacy and courageous challenge to ensure AI initiatives create sustainable customer and shareholder value without exposing the bank to unacceptable regulatory, operational or reputational risk.
You will shape how AI risk is embedded into delivery, lift capability across Crews, and continuously evolve controls so governance keeps pace with innovation.
Key accountabilities
Line-1 risk stewardship for assigned Crews - act as the primary risk partner for AI initiatives, providing advice to ensure each use-case progresses with appropriate controls, evidence and approvals before changes or go-live.
Commercial risk adviser and challenger - Partner with Crew Leads and Crew Tech Leads to shape AI initiatives early, constructively challenging assumptions, risk appetite, control design and commercial trade-offs to optimise both safety and value.
Policy conduit and translator (Group ↔ BW) - act as the primary conduit between Group AI policy/standards and Bankwest business: interpret and translate Group requirements into practical BW-specific obligations, ensure Crews implement Group expectations, escalate material policy conflicts or implementation risks, and feed operational learnings back to Group to inform policy refinement.
Triage and risk classification - assess new and materially changed AI use cases, determine the correct risk tier and governance pathway, and ensure timely routing to NFRC or other forums.
Control-and-evidence owner for L1 - ensure required artefacts are complete, current and demonstrably evidence-based.
Operational monitoring oversight - own Line-1 monitoring over Group Model Register for AI
AI Risk Forum Rep - Active member of AI technical review forum which provides independent review, challenge and endorsement of new AI models and material model changes.
Incident management and remediation - lead Line 1 Risk response to AI/model incidents, support blameless post-mortems, and escalate material unresolved issues promptly.
Capability uplift and pragmatic guidance - Drive a step-change in AI risk capability across Line 1 by embedding repeatable patterns, practical guardrails and scalable monitoring approaches that allow innovation to occur safely and sustainably.
BW AI Risk Steward – Ownership, maintenance and creation of BW specific AI Risk Governance materials e.g. BW AI Minimum Requirements, AI Guidance tool. Ensure governance pathways are proportionate and enable safe experimentation, avoiding unnecessary friction while maintaining control integrity.
Business translation and pragmatic advice - convert technical findings into operational and regulatory implications for business leaders and recommend proportionate, implementable risk treatments.
We’re interested in hearing from people who have:
Extensive experience in financial services risk, operational risk or model risk management with demonstrable ownership of model governance or model lifecycle activities.
Practical understanding of AI/ML concepts, model testing and validation, and modern generative AI (LLMs) risks and controls.
Strong stakeholder management - proven ability to influence technical and non-technical audiences at senior levels.
Excellent written and verbal communication: able to convert technical findings into clear, actionable risk advice for business leaders and committees.
Strong analytical mindset and attention to evidence: comfortable assessing monitoring outputs, validation results and control artefacts.
Experience with incident management, post-incident reviews and driving remediation to agreed deadlines.
Demonstrated commercial acumen - able to assess risk in the context of customer impact, speed to market and strategic value, not in isolation.
Proven ability to provide constructive, evidence-based challenge in complex stakeholder environments, including influencing senior leaders.
Experience operating in environments undergoing technological or regulatory change.
Strong digital literacy - comfortable navigating modern data ecosystems, model lifecycle tooling, automation concepts and emerging AI capabilities.
If this sounds like the role for you then we would love to hear from you. Apply today!
We support our people with the flexibility to balance where work is done with at least half their time each month connecting in office. We also have many other flexible working options available including changing start and finish times, part-time arrangements and job share to name a few. Talk to us about how these arrangements might work in the role you’re interested in.
If you're already part of the Commonwealth Bank Group (including Bankwest, x15ventures), you'll need to apply through Sidekick to submit a valid application. We’re keen to support you with the next step in your career.
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