Australian companies should encourage more technology professionals into senior management positions to keep up with global competition and help realise benefits from artificial intelligence, an Australian actuary and data scientist says.

Victor Bajanov, a Fellow of the Actuaries Institute and an AI transformation executive at data analytics firm Quantium, argued career pathways needed to better position technical experts for senior roles, in a dialogue paper released by the institute on Tuesday.

Many Australian organisations currently lacked such pathways, Bajanov argued.

“After seven to 10 years, our best data scientists face an impossible choice — abandon their technical expertise for management or remain in limited individual contributor roles,” he wrote.

“Meanwhile, global tech giants offer nine-figure packages to secure top technical talent,” he added, likely referring to Meta’s immense spending to poach technical talent from ChatGPT maker OpenAI.

Without technical knowledge in senior management, Australian businesses risked defaulting to “adoption over invention” when it came to technology, including in AI, Bajanov said.

To take advantage of new technological developments, Australian companies need to have executives “with backgrounds and know-how in coding, building machine learning models, and managing hybrid teams that include people and AI agents – and the battle scars from doing that”, Bajanov argued.

“Deep understanding comes from active practice," he said.

“This will help companies across multiple sectors face the increasing challenge of developing proprietary solutions rather than relying solely on buying standardised AI tools.”

‘Concerning structural patterns’

Bajanov said he believes Australian organisations’ tendency to implement existing technology instead of devising their owned stemmed from “concerning structural patterns”, and not a lack of technical talent or potential.

“While organisations are investing heavily in data science capabilities and AI initiatives, the leadership of these functions often emphasises business over technical expertise,” he wrote.

Bajanov cited successful Australian technical founders such as Atlassian’s Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, as well as the rise of “a new generation of Australian AI startups like Lorikeet and Relevance AI”, but argued “the broader pattern remains concerning”.

“We have some technical founders but lack technical leaders who have risen through AI and data science ranks to senior positions within established organisations,” he said.


A new report by Netskope suggests many chief information officers (CIOs) want to have more input in projects outside of IT. Image: Shutterstock

A lack of career pathways into leadership often contributed to top technical talent moving overseas, Bajanov added.

“When aspiring data scientists look up the career ladder and see only business managers at the top, the message is clear: technical excellence alone won’t take you to senior leadership,” he said.

Bajanov worried Australia’s history of technical innovation — which has included the development of technology behind Google Maps, polymer banknotes, and the black box flight recorder — could fizzle out, which he suggested “would be very sad to see”.

Many CIOs want more involvement in high-level decisions

Bajanov’s discussion paper was published on the same day American cybersecurity firm Netskope released new research which showed almost half of chief information officers (CIOs) it surveyed “want to be very involved in broader strategic priorities outside of IT”.

The report, based on interviews and research involving more than 200 CEOs and CIOs in the United States and United Kingdom, found only one in three (34 per cent) of CIOs were actually involved in high-level strategy work in their organisations.

Those CIOs were being asked to “lead on critical business initiatives that unlock the value of AI”, including workplace planning and operational resilience, the company found.

Netskope’s Chief Digital and Information Officer, Mike Anderson, said the CIO role was “evolving faster than many organisations are prepared for”.

"CIOs are expanding their remit to own operations and business functions in a way that was not the case even a few years ago,” he said.

“… What’s clear is that technical expertise is no longer enough for CIOs.

“They need to navigate complex stakeholder relationships, communicate in the language of business outcomes, and act as a nuanced strategic partner at the top of the organisation.”