NAB to hire 35 new staff to innovation lab

NAB will hire 35 new workers to its innovation hub to help it scale up experimentation with new products and services.

The bank today said it would increase its NAB Labs workforce by 70 percent next year, bringing total headcount in the team to 85.

NAB chief operating officer Antony Cahill said the bank needed to attract the best talent to 'bring the age of digital' to its customers.

NAB Labs launched three years ago as an experimentation hub for new technologies.

“The increased investment will include extra resources for our incubator program to support the scaling of initiatives such as the recently launched HICAPS Go app, developed in partnership with start-up Medipass Solutions, as well as to increase our new experiment numbers,” Cahill said in a statement.

The increased investment will boost NAB Labs' work in the areas of "experimentation, incubation and human centred design", the bank said.

The 35 new workers will be sourced from both inside and outside NAB.

Cahill said the bank was after "the very best people with the right skills and experience, who are creative thinkers, embrace agile working and challenge the status quo, to fill these roles".

NAB has been on a public recruitment drive to hire 600 technology specialists in the areas of software engineering, data, architecture, and security over the past month as part of a "rebalance" of its IT workforce.

It forms part of a significant restructure of its business in which 4000 workers will be let go, and 2000 new staff hired.

The bank is pursuing $1 billion in cost savings by FY20 through automation, simplification and a flatter organisational structure.

It is insourcing critical roles within its IT workforce, and 'accelerating capability in key areas of digital, technology, data and AI'.

Much of its planned $4.5 billion investment into the bank over the next three years will go towards technology and digital initiatives.

NAB recently decided to restructure its tech and operations function to split the unit up into five groups: business enabling technology; infrastructure, cloud and workplace; strategy and architect; enterprise security; and data.

It meant the CIO role - formerly held by David Boyle - was disbanded into divisional IT executive positions leading the new units.