Abhishek Kumar

Engineering executive · Digital banking platforms · Sydney

I lead the engineering behind the banking apps millions of Australians use every day.

As Chief Engineer, Digital at Westpac, I lead a 300+ person engineering organisation responsible for the Westpac app, online banking and the St.George, Bank of Melbourne and BankSA digital platforms – and the cloud platform that will replace them.

Get in touch LinkedIn

01 Selected impact

2019 – 2022Mobile

Rebuilding the Westpac app – now Australia’s #1

Led the engineering of ION, the A$90M rebuild of the Westpac iOS and Android apps, growing from a 20-person team. iOS shipped on time in February 2021; Android was rebuilt in six months and rolled out with no critical issues. Automated testing, delivery pipelines and security scanning were built in from day one.

The rebuilt app was named Australia’s #1 mobile banking app by Forrester three years running (2023, 2024, 2025). Releases moved from quarterly to fortnightly.

2024 – nowCustomer protection

Real-time scam protection, including two Australian firsts

Co-led the ideation and design of a set of scam protections with product and fraud teams, and owned their engineering delivery: real-time intervention on risky payments, verified bank calls with Optus, self-service account lock and payee checking.

Westpac SafeCall, built with Optus, was an Australian first. The scams program was recognised with Westpac’s 2024 CEO Award, Advocate of the Year.

2024 – nowPlatform

Modernising online banking without a big-bang rewrite

Defined the target state for online banking – modular, API-first and cloud-native – and chose progressive replacement over a risky one-off rewrite. Brought online banking source code and development in-house, opening the platform to modernisation.

The new cloud platform is live and already carrying production workload, while the existing platforms run at 99.9%+ availability.

2024 – nowSimplification

Bringing the regional brands onto one digital platform

Lead the digital stream of Westpac’s technology simplification program, consolidating the St.George, Bank of Melbourne and BankSA digital platforms. Authored the strategy, engineering approach and integrated delivery plan, and am accountable for its delivery.

2023 – nowAI

AI across the engineering lifecycle

Rolled out AI coding assistants to every engineer, measured on cycle time, rework and defect escape rather than activity. Initiated and sponsored in-house AI agents that accelerate testing and solution design, and led customer-facing AI pilots under responsible-AI approvals.

2022 – 2024Reliability

Releasing faster and more safely

Established Westpac’s first Scaled Agile implementation, scaling to 18 delivery squads, and introduced three Group firsts in observability, feature management and remote mobile testing.

Release outages cut from around six hours to a record 18 minutes.

02 How I lead

Clear ownership

Leaders own their platforms end to end, with explicit decision rights across architecture, engineering, platform and reliability – so delivery doesn’t wait on escalation.

Outcomes over activity

Engineering is measured on what customers and the business feel: availability, release safety, cycle time, cost of change and customer experience.

Culture through change

Strong engineering cultures are built deliberately – through learning programs, growing the next generation of leaders and acting on what teams tell us.

Capabilities

Leadership
Leading leaders across locations, organisation design, engineering culture, succession
Strategy
Multi-year roadmaps, business cases, platform consolidation, insourcing and vendor transition
Architecture
API-first and event-driven microservices, progressive (strangler-pattern) modernisation
Cloud
Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, platform guardrails, FinOps
Channels
Native iOS and Android, modern web
Engineering
SRE and observability, CI/CD, DevSecOps, developer experience, delivery metrics
AI
AI-assisted engineering, AI agents for design, build and test, customer-facing AI
Risk
Secure by design, operational resilience, regulated environments, customer identity (passkeys)

03 Career

  1. 2024 – now

    Chief Engineer, Digital (Head of Mobile & Online Banking)

    Westpac Group, Sydney

    Online and mobile banking across all brands, the digital stream of the technology simplification program, and the next-generation cloud platform.

  2. 2022 – 2024

    Chief Engineer, Mobile and Online Banking

    Westpac Group, Sydney

    Online banking added to the mobile remit; first Scaled Agile implementation; personal finance platform integrated in nine months.

  3. 2019 – 2022

    Chief Engineer, Mobile App Transformation

    Westpac Group, Sydney

    Led the engineering of the A$90M rebuild of the Westpac iOS and Android apps.

  4. 2014 – 2019

    Director and Program Manager, Westpac Account

    Fiserv Australia, Sydney

    Grew annual account revenue from A$7M to A$15M and the team from 63 to 110+ across Australia and India.

  5. 2005 – 2014

    Engineering and technical leadership

    Fiserv and Satyam Computers, India

    Enterprise banking and financial-services engineering; relocated to Sydney to help implement Westpac’s online banking.

Recognition

  • Westpac CEO Award – Advocate of the Year, with the Westpac Scams Team (2024)
  • Westpac CEO Award – Employee of the Year (2023)
  • Westpac Consumer & Business Banking Annual Award (2021)
  • Westpac Super Tech Award (2020)
  • Fiserv APAC Star Performer (2017, 2018)

Education

  • Master of Computer Applications – FORE School of Management
  • Bachelor of Science (Computer Science) – University of Delhi
  • Essentials of Finance for Non-Finance Managers – AGSM, UNSW Sydney (2025)
  • SAFe Program Consultant · Google SRE Culture · ITIL

04 Contact

Happy to talk about engineering leadership, platform modernisation and AI in financial services.

abhi.kmr@gmail.com linkedin.com/in/abhi-k05